‘Increasingly unable to defend their skies’

The latest drone attack on Moscow came within blocks of key military facilities. Here’s what we know.

Early in the morning of July 24, Moscow was hit by the latest in a series of drone attacks. According to the city’s mayor, Sergey Sobyanin, “drone strikes” hit two non-residential buildings at about 4:00 a.m.

Russian state media, citing state emergency services, said that debris from the first drone was found on the city’s Komsomolsky Prospekt. The crash reportedly destroyed the roof of a two-story administrative building and blew out the windows of nearby apartment buildings and stores. Sobyanin vowed to help residents repair their apartments “as quickly as possible.”

The second drone hit an unfinished business center on Likhachev Prospekt, causing nearby 17th- and 18th-story windows to shatter. Both streets were temporarily closed to traffic while emergency services workers cleaned up debris. There were reportedly no deaths or injuries.

Later, Russian media reported that a third drone, a helicopter-style one carrying no explosives, had crashed in the central cemetery in the Moscow suburb of Zelenograd. This crash also reportedly caused no deaths or injuries.

The Russian Defense Ministry said it used radio-electronic equipment to down the drones and blamed Ukraine for the attack. “On the morning of July 24, an attempt by the Kyiv regime to carry out a terrorist attack on targets on the territory of the city of Moscow using two unmanned aerial vehicles was prevented. Two Ukrainian UAVs were suppressed using radio-electronic warfare means and crashed,” said the agency’s statement.

Christo Grozev, Bellingcat’s lead Russia investigator, noted that the crash site on Komsomolsky Prospekt is located near numerous military facilities, including the Defense Ministry’s Military University and multiple top-secret divisions of the military’s Main Intelligence Directorate such as its “cyberattack headquarters.” The Defense Ministry’s main headquarters is also located within walking distance.

According to the U.S. government, a military office at 20 Komsomolsky Prospekt is home to the cyber espionage group Fancy Bear, also known as APT28, which consists of Russian military intelligence officers.

Hackers from Fancy Bear have been accused of breaking into servers belonging to the Democratic National Committee and the email account of former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as well as carrying out cyberattacks on the Bundestag and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. In 2020, the EU imposed sanctions against GRU head Igor Kostyukov and his subordinates in the agency’s 85th Main Special Service Center, or Fancy Bear.

Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the attacks on Moscow and Crimea (where the Russian Defense Ministry reported that it downed 17 drones early Monday morning) do not warrant additional security measures or presidential orders. “Everyone involved in providing security for our regions is on alert; they’re all taking measures,” he said.

Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev threatened to launch retaliatory strikes against Ukraine. “More and more often, the Banderite bastards are choosing peaceful, civilian targets for their vile strikes. Everyone must be prepared for this. And we need to choose non-standard targets for our strikes. Not just storage facilities, energy hubs, and oil bases; there are other places where they’re not yet expecting us. And where the effect will be very substantial,” he wrote on Telegram.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry “strongly condemned” the drone attacks, calling them a “crime of the Kyiv regime.” “We view what happened as another use of terrorist methods and intimidation of the civilian population by Ukraine’s military-political leadership. These attacks did not have any military value,” read the ministry’s statement. “All of the people responsible will be found and punished. The Russian side reserves the right to take firm retaliatory measures.”

The Ukrainian authorities have not officially commented on the Moscow drone attack, but Ukrainian media sources have reported that the attack was prepared by the Ukrainian Defense Ministry’s Main Intelligence Directorate. “All of the birdies made it to Moscow,” a source from Ukrainian intelligence told the outlet RBC Ukraine.

Ukrainian Digital Transformation Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said the attack shows that Russia’s electronic warfare and air defense systems are “increasingly unable to defend the occupiers’ sky.” “No matter what happens there, this is going to happen more,” he said, though he didn’t directly confirm that Kyiv was responsible for the attack.

Since the start of the full-scale war in Ukraine, Moscow has been attacked by drones multiple times. On the night of May 2, 2023, two drones attacked the dome of the Kremlin Senate building. The Russian authorities called the incident a terrorist attack and alleged it was an attempt to assassinate Vladimir Putin, who was in a different residence at the time of the attack.

On the morning of May 30, drones attacked several districts of Moscow and the greater Moscow region. Three drones crashed into residential buildings in the New Moscow district as well as in the city center. On June 21, three more drones were shot down in New Moscow and in the Naro-Fominsk District. On July 4, several drones were downed while approaching Moscow, causing the city’s Vnukovo airport to close temporarily.