Moscow and Crimea hit by drones as Russian forces bombard Ukraine’s south

Ukraine has been accused of launching a drone attack on Moscow – while Russia launched new strikes on port infrastructure in southern Ukraine.

Sergei Sobyanin, mayor of the Russian capital, said no one was hurt when the drones hit two non-residential buildings.

Russia’s defence ministry claimed the military jammed both drones, forcing them to crash.

One of the drones fell on the Komsomolsky motorway near the centre of Moscow, shattering shop windows and damaging the roof of a house about 200 metres from the towering defence ministry building, Russian media reported.

The ministry’s main headquarters has Pantsyr air defence systems on the roof.

It was not immediately clear if the drone targeted the defence ministry headquarters, which is about 1.7 miles from the Kremlin, or was heading to another target in the area.

Another drone hit an office building in southern Moscow, gutting its upper floors, leaving more visible damage than earlier drone strikes on the capital.

Emergency service workers were inspecting the damage and traffic was stopped on sections of the motorway where the drones fell.

Ukrainian authorities did not immediately claim responsibility for the strike, which was the second drone attack on Moscow this month.

In the previous attack, on July 4, the Russian military said four of the five drones were downed by air defences on the outskirts of Moscow and the fifth was jammed by electronic warfare means and forced down.

The raid prompted authorities to temporarily restrict flights at Moscow’s Vnukovo airport and divert flights to two other Moscow airports.

Russian authorities said another Ukrainian drone attack early on Monday hit an ammunition depot in Crimea and forced a halt in traffic on a major motorway and a railway crossing the Black Sea peninsula that was illegally annexed by Moscow in 2014.

The Moscow-appointed head of Crimea, Sergei Aksyonov, said the authorities also ordered the evacuation of several villages within a three-mile radius of the depot that was hit.

The military shot down or jammed 11 attacking drones, Mr Aksyonov said, while the defence ministry claimed later 11 of 17 attacking drones were jammed and crashed into the Black Sea and another three were shot down.

Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s digital transformation minister, said Monday’s drone attacks on Moscow and Crimea show Russia’s electronic warfare means and air defences are “less and less able to protect the skies of the invaders” and “there will be more of it”.

Ukrainska Pravda reported the drone attack on Moscow was a special operation by Ukrainian military intelligence.

On Saturday, a similar drone attack on Crimea hit another ammunition depot, sending huge plumes of black smoke skywards and also forcing the evacuation of residents.

Russian forces, meanwhile, hit port infrastructure on the Danube River in southern Ukraine with exploding drones early on Monday, injuring four workers and destroying a grain hangar and storage for other cargo, the Ukrainian military said.

Ukrainian forces downed three of the attacking drones, it said.

French international news agency Agence France-Presse said one of its video journalists was wounded by a drone attack on Monday while reporting at a Ukrainian artillery position near Bakhmut.

Dylan Collins, a US citizen based in Beirut, Lebanon and working on assignment in Ukraine, sustained multiple shrapnel injuries and was evacuated to a nearby hospital where he was being treated.

The agency said Mr Collins, 35, is conscious and speaking to colleagues.

Doctors say his condition is not life-threatening, the agency said.

Mr Collins’ colleague, AFP video journalist Arman Soldin, was killed by Russian rocket fire near Bakhmut in May.

Romanian president Klaus Iohannis on Monday “strongly condemned” the attack on civilian port infrastructure on Ukraine’s side of the Danube River which he said was “very close to Romania”.

Mr Iohannis said on Twitter that the incident poses “serious risks” to security in the Black Sea region.

The strike was the latest in a barrage of attacks that has damaged critical port infrastructure in southern Ukraine in the past week.

The Kremlin has described the strikes as retribution for last week’s Ukrainian strike on the crucial Kerch Bridge linking Russia with Crimea.

Speaking at the Aspen Security Forum via video link over the weekend, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called the bridge a legitimate target for Ukraine, saying Russia has used it to ferry military supplies and it must be “neutralised”.

Since Moscow cancelled a landmark grain deal a week ago amid Kyiv’s grinding efforts to retake its occupied territories, Russia has launched repeated attacks on Odesa, a key hub for exporting grain.

Wheat prices rose more than 8.5% on Monday after the attack on the Danube, which is a key thoroughfare for Ukraine’s grain exports amid the war.

It shows the market’s anxiety about Moscow expanding its targeting of Ukrainian grain shipments.

The attack also raises questions about a crucial alternate route after Russia exited the accord that provided protections for grain ships in a bid to ease a global food crisis.

Russia and Ukraine are two of the world’s major wheat, barley and vegetable oil suppliers.

Other routes by road and rail through Europe will heap on transportation costs and are likely to lead to lower production by Ukrainian farmers, analysts say.

On Sunday, at least one person was killed and 22 others wounded in an attack on Odesa that severely damaged 25 landmarks across the city, including the Transfiguration Cathedral.

United Nations agency Unesco strongly condemned the attack on the cathedral and other heritage sites and said it will send a mission in the coming days to assess the damage.

Odesa’s historic centre was declared a Unesco world heritage site earlier this year and the agency said the Russian attacks contradict Moscow’s pledge to take precautions to spare world heritage sites in Ukraine.

The Russian military denied targeting the cathedral, claiming without evidence it was likely hit by a Ukrainian air defence missile.