Ukrainian drone hits upmarket Moscow high-rise ahead of Victory Day celebrations

A Ukrainian drone hit an upmarket residential high-rise in Moscow in the early hours of Monday, causing visible damage to the façade of the building but no casualties.

It was the third night in a row the Russian capital came under attack from drones, days before Russia holds a scaled-back parade to mark the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany.

An unverified video circulating on social media showed firemen entering a heavily damaged flat covered in dust and rubble, with blown-out windows. Another showed drone debris strewn across the street below.

Two other drones were intercepted, Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said. Vnukovo and Domodedovo international airports suspended operations overnight.

A total of 117 were intercepted over several Russian regions between Sunday and Monday, the Russian defence ministry said. Sixty alone were aimed at the region of St Petersburg in what the regional governor Aleksandr Drodzhenko said had been a “massive” attack.

The residential building that was hit is located in an upscale neighbourhood in south-west Moscow, less than 10km (six miles) from the Kremlin and Red Square, where Saturday’s parade will be held.

Ukrainian drones have attacked Moscow several times since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Drone alerts regularly shut down airports on the outskirts of the capital and disrupt aerial traffic, but much of the capital is protected by the Pantsir-S surface-to-air missile system and successful strikes so close to the centre are relatively rare.

Betraying a sense of nervousness ahead of the 9 May celebrations, the Kremlin last week announced that due to a “terrorist threat” from Ukraine it would scale back the yearly grand military parade on Red Square. For the first time since 2008, no armoured vehicles or missile systems will feature.

On Monday, Moscow unilaterally declared a ceasefire with Ukraine on 8 and 9 May to cover the celebrations. At the same time, the Russian defence ministry threatened a massive retaliatory strike on the centre of Kyiv if Ukraine tried to disrupt its Victory Day celebrations.

Several local phone operators announced that mobile internet will be restricted in Moscow for much of the week ahead for “security reasons”, Russian media reported on Monday.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the Kremlin was afraid that “drones will fly over Red Square. This is telling… We need to keep up the pressure.”

He later dismissed an idea of a one-day ceasefire as “not serious” and said Kyiv had not received any official proposal. He said Ukraine would observe its own ceasefire “starting at 00:00 on the night of May 5–6”.

Since the start of the war, Ukraine has developed an arsenal of long-range drones which are often able to hit targets many hundreds of miles from its borders.

Such drones now routinely hit energy infrastructure and refineries across Russia with the aim of slashing Russian oil production and revenue.

On Sunday Zelensky said three Russian oil tankers, a cruise-missile carrier warship and a patrol boat had been struck in separate attacks on two Russian ports.

The tankers were part of Russia’s “shadow fleet” used to evade Western sanctions imposed over Moscow’s full-scale invasion launched in 2022, Zelensky said.

For its part, Russia continues to launch deadly aerial attacks on Ukrainian cities on a daily basis.

On Monday Ukrainian authorities said four people were killed and 18 were injured in a missile strike near Kharkiv, close to the border with Russia.