Moscow Mayor, Sergei Sobyanin has announced the latest drone attack on Russia’s capital city, saying on Wednesday, August 9, 2023, that Russian air defences have shot down two armed drones which were headed for Moscow.
The drone raid was at least the third attempted attack on Moscow within a week.
Sobyanin disclosed early on Wednesday that one drone was shot down in the Domodedovo area on the southern outskirts of the city, while the second was shot down in the Minsk highway area, west of the capital.
“Two combat drones’ attempt to fly into the city was recorded. Both were shot down by air defence,” Sobyanin noted on Telegram.
“At the moment, there is no information about victims of the fall of the wreckage,” he said, adding that emergency services were on the ground.
Later on, a Russian state-run news agency reported that the Defence Ministry announced a failed attempt by Ukraine to attack facilities in the Moscow Region by UAV.
“An attempt by the Kyiv regime to carry out a terrorist attack by unmanned aerial vehicles over the territory of the Moscow Region was thwarted during the night. Two drones were shot down by air defence systems,” the report said.
On July 30, 2023, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned that “war” was coming to Russia, and in particular, to the country’s “symbolic centres and military bases.”
Ukraine Accuses Russia Of Targeting Rescue Teams In Pokrovsk Attack
Meanwhile, Ukrainian officials have accused Russian forces of targeting rescue workers by hitting residential buildings with two consecutive missiles; the first one to draw crews to the scene and the second one to wound or kill them.
Donetsk Governor, Pavlo Kyrylenko disclosed that the Iskander missiles, which have an advanced guidance system that increases their accuracy, hit within 40 minutes of each other.
The Head of the Pokrovsk city administration, Serhii Dobriak, described the attacks as “a typical Russian scenario,” with 30 to 40 minutes between missiles.
“When rescuers come to save people’s lives, another rocket arrives. And the number of casualties increases,” he said in a video comment to local media.
In his nightly address, Zelenskyy, stated that the missile strike in the city of Pokrovsk killed at least nine people, including an emergency official.
According to officials, the number of injured rose to 82, most of them police officers, emergency workers and soldiers who rushed to assist residents.
Since the start of the war, Russia has employed a tactic known in military jargon as“double tap” where it hits targets with artillery and missiles and then strikes the exact same spot around 30 minutes later, often hitting emergency teams responding to the first attack. The same strategy was used by Russians in Syria’s civil war.
Ivan Vyhivskyi, Chief of Ukraine’s National Police, noted, “All of (the police) were there because they were needed, putting their efforts into rescuing people after the first strike.”
“They knew that under the rubble were the injured — they needed to react, to dig, to retrieve, to save. And the enemy deliberately struck the second time,” Vyhivskyi added.
The U.N. humanitarian Coordinator in Ukraine, Denise Brown, described the latest attack as “absolutely ruthless” and stressed that it was “a serious breach” of international law and violated “any principle of humanity.”
78 employees of Ukraine’s State Emergency Service have been killed and 280 have been wounded while responding to Russian missile strikes since the beginning of Russia’s invasion, agency spokesperson Col. Oleksandr Khorunzhyi revealed.
Ukrainian officials claim that rescuers are protected by international conventions as they are providing humanitarian assistance and are not engaged in combat operations.
