MOSCOW/KIEV, June 18 — A Ukrainian drone attack damaged residential and commercial properties in Russia’s Moscow region and injured one person, while Russian air defense forces shot down 194 drones targeting the capital, officials said Thursday.
Russian air defense forces kept intercepting drones targeting the region throughout Wednesday night into Thursday morning, while emergency responders, police, medical personnel and local officials were working at affected sites, Moscow Region Governor Andrei Vorobyov said on social media.
As of 9:22 a.m. Moscow time (0622 GMT), 194 Ukrainian drones approaching Moscow were shot down, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said on social media.
A woman sustained a minor shoulder injury after debris from a downed drone struck a private house in the village of Stepanovo near the city of Elektrostal.
The attack also damaged buildings in the cities of Zhukovsky and Lyubertsy as well as the districts of Chekhov and Pavlovsky Posad, and four major airports serving Moscow temporarily suspended arrivals and departures for safety reasons, authorities said.
On the same day, Russia’s defense ministry said its forces launched a series of high-precision strikes overnight on Ukraine’s fuel and energy infrastructure, hitting two major facilities, including a fuel storage site in the Kiev region and the Zaturyno oil refinery in the Poltava region.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Thursday that Ukrainian forces struck an oil refinery in Russia’s Moscow region for the second time this week, as part of retaliatory attacks on Russian infrastructure.
“This is a fully justified response to Russian attacks on our cities and communities,” Zelensky wrote on social media X. (Namibia Daily News / Xinhua)
