When Maria heard that a drone had come down not far from her home, she wanted to put the child and suitcase in the car to leave for “as far as possible from Moscow”. The thirty-year-old lives in Profsoyuznaya Street in the south of the Russian capital. One of the drones that suddenly attacked Moscow on Tuesday morning came down there. Although the explosion was too far from her home to hear, the shock is good. “My first reflex was to call back the babysitter, who was just about to take my daughter for a walk.”
According to the Russian Defense Ministry, three of a total of eight drones were shot down with “electronic anti-drone technology”, causing them to change direction and hit three apartment buildings in two locations in the south of the city. According to the authorities, two residents suffered minor injuries, including from broken glass. Another five drones are said to have been shot down by anti-aircraft fire, including the Pantsir missile defense system that is supposed to protect Moscow against outside attacks.
However, videos posted to social media by Muscovites in the south and east of the city early Tuesday morning showed many more drones flying around the city’s vicinity. One is said to have exploded in a field outside Moscow, another was shot down by anti-aircraft guns. In addition, a few drones flew over the expensive Rublyovka district in the east of the city, where senior Kremlin officials, well-known Russians and President Putin himself own villas.
Kyiv air raid alert
The attack on Moscow followed after the Ukrainian capital Kyiv and other parts of the country were targeted by large-scale Russian airstrikes for the third time in 24 hours. The city’s mayor Vitali Klitschko reported one dead and three injured and called on residents to take shelter, also because of falling debris that caused damage in several neighborhoods of the capital. In addition to drones, Russia also sent 11 cruise missiles at Kyiv, all of which were intercepted, according to Ukraine. It was already the seventeenth airstrike by Russia this month. On Monday, the capital was even attacked twice. Ukrainian intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov sharply criticized Russia on Monday: “Anyone who tried to intimidate us in the hope that it would have some effect will soon regret it. Our answer will not be long in coming.”
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Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the drone strike on Moscow was in retaliation for a Russian attack on “a command center” of the Ukrainian army in Kyiv last Sunday. The fact that there was hardly any damage in Moscow was, according to Peskov, due to the “good functioning” of the anti-aircraft defenses, which offered the city sufficient protection. He added that Russian President Putin will be informed of the situation in the city “without delay”. Earlier this month, two drones exploded over the Kremlin. Russia blamed Ukraine for what they called an “attack on Putin”.
Maria is skeptical about the reading of the Russian authorities. “Those drones had to fly a hundred kilometers and they were not noticed, don’t make me laugh,” she says. She cannot say who might have launched the drones. “The fact is that we quietly go to work and live our lives here, while bombs fall in Ukraine. I can’t even put into words how I feel about that. It’s surreal.” She thinks it will only strengthen the Russian authorities in the narrative that Russia is being attacked by Ukraine instead of the other way around.
Ukraine denied involvement and suggested a false flagoperation by the Russians themselves. The New York Times concluded, however, based on intelligence from the CIA, that those drones did indeed come from Ukraine. The Ukrainian authorities denied any involvement on Tuesday, but could not suppress gloating. Mychajlo Podoljak, an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky, said he had “enjoyed” the sight. He predicted “an increase in attacks”, but added that Ukraine was “of course not” affected.
New reality
There were also concerns in Russia on Tuesday that it will not be limited to a single attack. “This is a new reality that we must recognize,” Duma member Aleksandr Chinshtein wrote on Telegram on Tuesday, where he published suspected locations of the other downed drones. “Undoubtedly, terrorist acts of sabotage from Ukraine will increase. It is therefore necessary to significantly expand defense and security measures, including to counter such attacks. The fact that all eight drones were shot down with defense systems is fantastic. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t worry. Don’t underestimate the enemy!”
From the images from Moscow, aviation expert Rob Lee of the US Foreign Policy Research Institute deduces that it may be the UJ-22, a Ukrainian propeller-driven long-range drone. In addition, a previously unknown model was on display with a distinctive ‘canard’ airfoil, with small wings in the front and wider wings behind. The drone is very similar to the ‘Beaver’, a model that was developed and tested last winter by the defense company Oekroboronprom from Kyiv and has a range of more than a thousand kilometers.
Moscow is about 450 kilometers from the nearest part of Ukraine, and 610 kilometers from the border villages near the city of Belgorod where Russian armed anti-Kremlin groups previously crossed the border. These distances are therefore easy for the drones to bridge. The website of Ukrjet, the producer of the UJ-22, states a range of 800 kilometers, a cruising speed of 120 kilometers per hour and a top speed of 160 kilometers per hour, slower than most passenger cars.
This should make it easy for the Russian air defense to detect the UJ-22s with radars and shoot them out of the air, especially in daylight and in clear weather. According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, all drones have been defused – images seem to confirm this. It is unlikely that the drones would have been launched by partisans or saboteurs on Russian territory, given the size of the operation. This means that after crossing the border, the drones could fly hundreds of kilometers above Russian territory undisturbed.
“Drones are not hard to take down but you return on investment is much bigger when they come to you,” explains Paul van Hooft, air defense expert at HCSS in The Hague. “At the border you would have to spread your defenses over a huge area.” The consequence is that Muscovites get to see the attacks, and a few drones can slip through the air defenses in the event of a massive attack. That might have been the purpose of the attack: to bring the war to Moscow and test Moscow’s air defenses in preparation for another attack.
With the cooperation of Paul Luttikhuis