In the early hours of this morning, Ukraine hit Moscow with ‘one of the largest’ drone attacks against the Russian capital since the war began two and a half years ago. According to Moscow’s mayor Sergei Sobyanin, air defence forces shot down a number of drones – later confirmed to be 11 – between 3 a.m. and 4:45 a.m. ‘This is one of the largest attempts to attack Moscow with drones in all time,’ Sobyanin claimed.
There have been no confirmed casualties or damage yet. Still, Kyiv’s attack managed to cause far-reaching chaos across Moscow, with three of the capital’s airports, Vnukovo, Domodedovo and Zhukovsky, forced to temporarily restrict flights for several hours.
Last night’s drone attack on Moscow suggests Kyiv is eyeing up a multi-pronged attack
Moscow has periodically been targeted by Ukrainian drone strikes for over a year, with one of the first attacks coming shortly before Russia celebrated Victory Day in May 2023. Interestingly, last night’s attack is seemingly the largest on Moscow the Russian authorities have been willing to acknowledge. But Sobyanin’s claims that this is ‘one of the largest’ drone attacks ever suffered by Moscow may not actually be the case. According to the independent Russian news outlet Baza, in an attack on 30 May 2023, at least 25 drones were shot down over the Russian capital – although at the time the Russian ministry of defence (MoD) only acknowledged the presence of eight.
Moscow wasn’t the only Russian city targeted by Ukraine overnight. The Russian MoD confirmed that 23 drones were shot down over the Bryansk region, six over Belgorod, three over Kaluga and two over the Kursk region. Three of these regions share a border with Ukraine.
This latest drone attack on Moscow comes as sources close to the Kremlin have suggested that the Russian authorities believe that Ukraine’s incursion into the Kursk region will take several months to repel. Speaking to the independent Russian news outlet Meduza, one government source described this time scale as ‘quite optimistic – if everything works out as planned’. In the meantime, their aim is to spin the Ukrainian occupation of the region as a ‘new normal’ to the Russian population.
As part of this new propaganda spin, Russian state media has reportedly been instructed not to deny the fact that Kyiv’s forces have broken through onto Russian soil, and acknowledge that total victory to regain lost ground in the region will take time. To minimise panic and reinforce the idea of a ‘new normal’, gubernatorial elections scheduled for early September in the Kursk region are still going ahead as planned, with early voting introduced to compensate for the disruption.
Ukraine’s Kursk attack, now remarkably into its third week, poses an increasingly large problem for Putin’s regime. Kyiv now claims to control at least 92 settlements across an area of 483 square miles. For the Russian president, the admission that it will potentially take months to repel Ukrainian troops from Russian soil heaps humiliation onto the fact Ukraine was able to do this at all.
For now, at least, Russia is resisting a large-scale redistribution of troops from the Ukrainian front to fight off Zelensky’s troops on home soil. With the authorities currently resisting calling for another round of mobilisation, the most likely scenario involves the Russian army sending in large numbers of young, undertrained conscripts to fend off the assault – breaking a pledge Putin made at the start of the conflict not to send conscripts into active combat.
With the families of conscripts already dispatched to Kursk voicing anger and dismay at their treatment, pressure on the Kremlin is slowly building. Last night’s drone attack on Moscow suggests Kyiv is eyeing up a multi-pronged attack in its efforts to turn the tables on the conflict. So far, their gamble appears to be paying off.
Watch more like this on SpectatorTV:
Comments