Moscow flights grounded by wave of Ukrainian drone strikes

Ukraine launched a massive wave of drone strikes against Russia on Saturday night, forcing the Crimean bridge to close and grounding flights from Moscow.

Car traffic over the bridge connecting Crimea with mainland Russia was suspended for half an hour on Sunday morning, Russian authorities announced, without explaining why.

Moscow’s Domodedovo, Vnukovo and Zhukovsky airports were forced to impose flight restrictions for almost three hours after four Ukrainian drones were shot down near the Russian capital, Russia’s state aviation watchdog reported.

Sergei Sobyanin, Moscow’s mayor, said a fifth drone, close to Domodedovo airport, was later downed, with no casualties or damage reported.

However, footage and images circulating on social media appeared to show a hole in the roof of a building at the airport following a drone strike.

Elsewhere, a fireball erupted at an oil refinery in Slavyansk-on-Kuban in Krasnodar Krai, south western Russia, after Ukraine’s sixth drone strike on a Russian oil facility in a week.

The Russian defence ministry said it downed all 17 drones attacking Krasnodar, but local Russian military intelligence said on Telegram that “a fire broke out as a result of the fall of one of the devices”.

The blaze at the refinery was extinguished a few hours later, and preliminary information indicated a worker had died from a heart attack, officials said.

Ukrainian military intelligence was behind the strike, a security service source told Ukrainska Pravda.

Another two drones were shot over the Kaluga region, just south of the Russian capital, and the Yaroslavl region, north-east of Moscow, according to the defence ministry.

The latter, around 500 miles from the Ukrainian border, were some of the longest-range launched by Ukraine so far.

More Ukrainian drones were downed over the Belgorod, Kursk and Rostov regions, which border Ukraine. Vyacheslav Gladkov, the governor of Belgorod, reported damage to electricity and gas supplies in the area.

In the front line region of Zaporizhzhia, a fire broke out at a polling station after it was hit by a Ukrainian drone, Tass, the Russian state-owned agency, reported.

Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, did not address the reported attacks in his nightly video address on Saturday, but he thanked his military forces and intelligence “for the new Ukrainian long-range capabilities”.

Mr Zelensky said: “The Russian war machine has vulnerabilities that we can reach with our weapons”.

The wave of strikes came on the final day of Russia’s sham presidential election, with Vladimir Putin poised to extend his near-quarter-century rule for six more years.