🔴 Live: Moscow office tower hit as drones target Russian capital

Issued on: 01/08/2023 – 06:51

3 min

7:15am: Russia says repelled drone attack on Black Sea patrol boats

Russia says it has repelled an overnight drone attack targeting its patrol boats in the Black Sea.

“Three naval enemy drones were destroyed,” Russia’s defence ministry said in a statement, adding that the boats were attacked 340 kilometres (210 miles) southwest of Sevastopol, the base of Russia’s Black Sea fleet on the annexed Crimean peninsula.

The ministry said the ships were in the area to control the passage of other vessels.

4:56am: Drones target Moscow, high-rise building hit

A Ukrainian drone downed by Russia has struck a Moscow office tower that was also hit over the weekend, as multiple other drones were downed, Russian officials said.

“Several drones were shot down by air defence systems while trying to fly to Moscow. One (drone) flew into the same tower in (Moscow) City as last time. The facade on the 21st floor was damaged,” Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin said on Telegram. “There is no information on casualties,” he said, adding that emergency services were on the scene.

Russia’s defence ministry blamed the attack on Ukraine, saying that multiple facilities in the Moscow region had been targeted.

“Two Ukrainian (unmanned aerial vehicles) were destroyed by air defence systems over the territory of the Odintsovo and Narofominsk districts of Moscow region,” the ministry said in a statement. “Another drone was suppressed by electronic warfare and, having lost control, crashed on the territory of the Moscow-City non-residential building complex.”

3:30am: Moscow’s Vnukovo international airport briefly closed

Moscow’s Vnukovo international airport was briefly closed early Tuesday, the TASS state news agency reported.

“Vnukovo was temporarily closed for arrivals and departures, the planes are redirected to other airports,” emergency services said, according to TASS, which later reported it had resumed normal operations.

• Key developments from Monday, July 31:

The United Kingdom on Monday sanctioned “key figures involved in [the] deplorable sentencing” of dual national Vladimir Kara-Murza after a Russian court dismissed his appeal against a 25-year sentence.

London announced it had sanctioned six figures – three judges, two prosecutors and an expert witness – for their role in what it called “his politically motivated targeting”. They added that Kara-Murza was being “persecuted by the Russian regime for his anti-war stance”.

Meanwhile, US government officials said they would attend a Ukraine peace summit in Saudi Arabia, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told a briefing on Monday, adding that he could not give more details. The Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday that Saudi Arabia would invite Western states, Ukraine and major developing countries to the talks.

This on a day when six people were killed and 75 injured when Russian ballistic missiles slammed into an apartment complex and a university building in President Volodymyr Zelensky’s hometown of Kryvyi Rih on Monday. Ukrainian officials said at least six people had died in the attack and 75 were wounded as the blasts trapped residents beneath rubble

Read yesterday’s liveblog to see how the day’s events unfolded.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP, AP and Reuters)