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Moscow Targeted: Mass Drone Attack Hits Russia — Putin Orders Border Tightening

Chaos erupted in Russia overnight as drones swarmed multiple regions, sparking an explosion at an oil depot and another hitting outside Moscow, according to local reports.

One strike at around 2 a.m. in the Krasnodar region was less than 100 feet from a Russian Defense Ministry barracks, the independent Agentstvo News reports. Two drones filled with explosives landed at a nearby Rosneft oil depot in Tuapse, sparking a blaze that was “quickly extinguished,” according to the Russian outlet Baza.

Hours later, St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo Airport came to a standstill as authorities shut down the surrounding airspace, reportedly in response to an “unidentified flying object” spotted in the area.

Local authorities confirmed to RIA Novosti that incoming and outgoing flights were temporarily halted, though they gave no reason for the move. Meanwhile, Baza reported, fighter jets were deployed to take down the “object.”

A short while later, however, Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed the whole thing had simply been a training exercise, and the airspace was reopened.

Drones were also reported overnight in the Bryansk and Belgorod regions, as well as the Republic of Adygea. Another drone landed in the Moscow region, near a Gazprom gas compressor station on Tuesday. Local reports noted that the drone could have made it to the Kremlin in less than an hour if it had not crashed.

“The FSB and other competent authorities are dealing with the situation, there is no threat to the safety of residents,” Moscow Region Governor Andrei Vorobyov said in a statement.

The strikes were part of what local media described as a “mass drone attack” that appears to have intensified in the last 24 hours.

Putin’s response

Putin on Tuesday ordered officials to tighten control of the border with Ukraine after a spate of drone attacks that Russian authorities blamed on Kyiv delivered a new challenge to Moscow more than a year after its full-scale invasion of its neighbor.

While Putin didn’t refer to any specific attacks in a speech in the Russian capital, his comments came hours after drone attacks targeted several areas in southern and western Russia and authorities closed the airspace over St. Petersburg in response to what some reports said was a drone.

Also Tuesday, several Russian television stations aired a missile attack warning that officials blamed on a hacking attack.

The drone attacks caused no casualties but provoked a security stir as the war with Kyiv stretched into its second year last week.

Ukrainian officials didn’t immediately claim responsibility for the attacks, but they similarly avoided directly acknowledging responsibility for previous strikes and sabotage while emphasizing Ukraine’s right to hit any target in Russia following the full-scale invasion that began last year.

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