Ukraine attacks Russia with large-scale drone attacks

Ukraine attacked Moscow on Wednesday with at least 11 drones shot down by air defences in what Russian officials said was one of the biggest drone strikes on the capital since the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

The conflict, largely a grinding artillery and drone battle across the fields, forests and villages of eastern Ukraine, escalated on August 6 when Ukraine sent thousands of soldiers into Russia's western Kursk region.

For months, Ukraine has also fought an increasingly damaging drone war against the refineries and airfields of the world's second largest oil exporter, though major drone attacks on the Moscow region - with a population of over 21 million - are rarer.

Russia's defence ministry said it destroyed a total of 45 drones over Russian territory, including 11 over the Moscow region, 23 over the border region of Bryansk, six over the Belgorod region, three over the Kaluga region and two over the Kursk region.

Some of the drones were destroyed over the city of Podolsk, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said. The city in the Moscow region is some 38 kms (24 miles) south of the Kremlin.

"This is one of the largest attempts to attack Moscow using drones ever," Sobyanin said on the Telegram messaging app in the early hours of Wednesday.

"The layered defence of Moscow that was created made it possible to successfully repel all the attacks from the enemy UAVs."

The attack comes as Russia is advancing in eastern Ukraine, where it controls about 18 per cent of the territory, and battling to repel Ukraine's incursion into the Kursk region, the biggest foreign attack on Russian territory since World War Two.

Russian media showed unverified footage of drones whirring over the dawn sky of the Moscow region and then being shot down in a ball of flame by air defences.