(Bloomberg) -- Russia said it downed 144 drones early Tuesday, including in the Moscow region, where the attack caused airports in the capital temporarily to halt flights.
Anti-missile systems downed 20 drones in the Moscow region alone, Russia’s Defense Ministry said.
Moscow’s Domodedovo, Vnukovo and Zhukovsky airports temporarily suspended operations, the state-run Tass news service reported. Those restrictions were later lifted, Tass reported.
A 46-year-old woman died and several people were injured when two apartment buildings in the Ramenskoye district of Moscow region were damaged, regional Governor Andrey Vorobyov said on his Telegram channel.
In Bryansk region, which borders Ukraine, air defenses downed 72 drones, while 14 others were stopped overnight in the Kursk region, according to the Defense Ministry. Nine regions in total reported defending against attacks by unmanned aircraft.
With the Kremlin’s invasion well into its third year, Ukraine has been striking deep into Russia with drones and last month took hundreds of square kilometers of border territory in the Kursk region with the aim of undermining Russia’s war effort.
Russia has been targeting Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure, including power, heating and water supplies, in large-scale missile and drone attacks across the country ahead of the winter season. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the energy sector had sustained significant damage in some of the biggest strikes since the war’s start.
Tuesday’s attack comes after Russia said it repelled 158 Ukrainian drones across more than a dozen regions, including the capital, on Sept 1. That UAV strike ignited a blaze at a major oil processor.
Kyiv reported a series of drone attacks overnight, which ended without damage after defenses worked successfully, the Ukrainian capital’s military administration said on Telegram.
Ukraine’s air force said on Telegram that 38 out of 46 Shahed drones fired by Russian forces overnight were taken out.
(Updates with additional background starting in the fifth paragraph, and report from Ukraine’s air force in 10th paragraph.)
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