The Sheremetyevo Airport in Moscow, December 2020. Photo: EPA/SERGEI ILNITSKY
Several Russian airports, including all four airports in the capital Moscow, suspended operations overnight on Wednesday amid a massive Ukrainian drone strike, according to Russian civil aviation authority Rosaviatsia.
Over 200 flights were cancelled and delayed overnight at Moscow’s Domodedovo, Vnukovo, Sheremetyevo and Zhukovsky airports, Rosaviatsiya said. The airports resumed operations around 8am on Thursday.
The Russian Defence Ministry said 287 Ukrainian drones had been shot down overnight Wednesday over 12 Russian regions, including 118 over the Bryansk region, which borders Ukraine, and 40 over the Moscow region.
Airport disruptions were also reported in several other Russian cities, including Grozny, Vladikavkaz and Makhachkala in the North Caucasus, as well as Ivanovo and Tambov in central Russia.
Telegram channel ASTRA said a mineral fertiliser plant which produces ammonium nitrate, a component that is used in explosives, caught fire in the northwestern Russian city of Novgorod following a drone strike on the city, though no casualties were reported.
Vasily Anokhin, the governor of western Russia’s Smolensk region, announced on Wednesday that the region would shut down mobile internet “indefinitely” as a safety measure. Residents of multiple Russian regions have reported cellular data shutdowns in the past six months, which the authorities have said were necessary to prevent Ukrainian drone strikes.
The massive Ukrainian drone strikes overnight Wednesday followed a barrage of Russian drones that targeted Ukraine over the weekend and caused widespread power outages across the country.
Fourteen people were injured on Tuesday in a Ukrainian drone strike on the city Cheboksary, in the Volga region republic of Chuvashia, after drones hit a residential building some 450 metres from a Russian defence manufacturing plant.
