By Hannah Wagner and André Ballin, dpa
Kiev (dpa) – Russian airstrikes targeted Kiev for the third night in a row, killing one person, Kiev authorities said on Tuesday, while Russia reported that Moscow was targeted by drones.
More than 20 drones were destroyed by Ukraine’s air defences in Kiev, the military administration of the capital said.
Fragments of drones shot down by air defences crashed into an apartment building, killing one person and sending an elderly woman to hospital, the state news agency Ukrinform reported, citing the city administration and Kiev Mayor Vitali Klitschko.
The apartment block caught fire and search efforts were under way to find any people trapped under the rubble. Other fragments of drones crashed in different districts, damaging cars and other objects.
The latest attacks follow the heaviest drone bombardment by the Kremlin in months over the weekend.
Russia launched its full-scale war on Ukraine some 15 months ago. In recent weeks, there has also been an increase in shelling and drone attacks in Russian regions, with Moscow apparently also a target.
Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin on Tuesday said that that two people had been injured and some buildings had been slightly damaged as the capital was targeted by several drones.
No one was “seriously injured,” Moscow Mayor Sobyanin wrote on Telegram. Residents were taken to safety and security forces were deployed, he said.
The governor of the Moscow region, Andrei Vorobyov, said air defences had been active and that several drones had been “shot down on approach to Moscow.”
Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu spoke of a “terrorist attack” on civilian facilities.
The Russian Defence Ministry blamed Kiev for what it called an “act of terrorism with unmanned aerial vehicles.”
The ministry said eight drones were used and that all had been destroyed. Three were diverted from their original flight path and the remaining five were shot down by Russian air defences, according to the ministry.
However, images shared in social media suggested a greater number of drones. Some photos showed columns of smoke in the sky and above a field.
“It is absolutely clear that these are responses by the Kiev regime to our rather effective strikes against one of the decision-making centres,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, according to the Interfax news agency.
He was referring to an attack by the Russian military on Sunday, but did not give more specific details. The Russian ministry has not reported the destruction of high-level command structures in Kiev in recent days, however.
Peskov also used the incident to again justify the war – described in Russia as a “special military operation” – on Ukraine.
Ukraine denied involvement in the attack and responded with derision.
“Of course, we are not directly involved,” Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to the Ukrainian presidential office told a breakfast radio show.
Podolyak also forecast that the number of attacks on Russian territory would probably continue to increase. “All the people who believe … that they can destroy another sovereign state with absolute impunity have not yet understood after 15 months that they cannot repeat 2014,” he said, referring to the year that Moscow annexed the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea.
The latest incident comes after other recent drone attacks in Russia, mostly close to Russia’s border with Ukraine.
British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said Ukraine had the right to attack targets on Russian territory for the purpose of self-defence.
“Ukraine does have the legitimate right to defend itself. It has the legitimate right to do so within its own borders, of course, but it does also have the right to project force beyond its borders to undermine Russia’s ability to project force into Ukraine itself,” said Cleverly.
“So legitimate military targets beyond its own border are part of Ukraine’s self-defence. And we should recognise that,” he told the press alongside his Estonian counterpart Margus Tsahkna in Estonia’s capital Tallinn.
But Cleverly refused to comment on the incidents in Moscow, saying he was not going to speculate on the latest strikes.
The US government meanwhile said it does not support attacks “inside of Russia” amid reports of Moscow being targeted.
“We do not support attacks inside of Russia, we have been very clear about that. We have been focused on providing Ukraine… with the equipment and training they need to retake their own sovereign territory,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said during a briefing in Washington on Tuesday.
Jean-Pierre said that Washington was still looking into what happened, but reiterated Washington’s position.
“We do not support the use of US-made equipment being used for attacks inside of Russia, we’ve been very clear about that…we have been clear not just publicly, but privately clearly with the Ukrainians,” she told journalists.
GNA