Russia: Woman killed in Ukrainian strike near Moscow

Russia on Tuesday said a woman had died following a Ukrainian drone strike that hit a building residential area in the Moscow region, which is rarely affected by such attacks.

In eastern Ukraine, where Russian troops continue to advance, Moscow claimed in the morning the capture of the town of Krasnogorivka, which was long a stronghold in the Donetsk region, as well as three other villages.

Several hundred kilometers from the front, a 46-year-old woman died after a drone hit a residential building in Ramenskoye, on the southeastern outskirts of the Russian capital, Moscow Region Governor Andrei Vorobiov announced on Telegram.

He also indicated that three people had been injured and taken to a hospital.

The Russian capital and its region have been the target of several drone attacks since the Kremlin's large-scale offensive in Ukraine in February 2022. But this is the first time that one of them has been fatal.

Kiev is carrying out these strikes in response to Russian bombardments that have been devastating its territory for more than two and a half years and killing civilians there almost daily.

On the night of Monday to Tuesday, the Russian army said on Telegram that it had shot down a total of 144 Ukrainian drones, including 20 over the Moscow region.

– “A terrible thing” –

In front of the building that was hit on Tuesday morning, a few people were looking at the damage, some of them visibly shocked, according to an AFP journalist on the scene.

The strike caused a fire that was quickly brought under control by firefighters on the 10th floor and left a gaping black hole.

Dmitri, 52, lives in the building. He says he heard a “powerful explosion” and then tried to flee with his family when thick smoke filled his stairwell. Fearing death from asphyxiation, he waited for the firefighters to arrive.

The drone struck “about three or four meters from our house,” he says. “A terrible thing passed very close to us.”

“I think that (drones) will come again, that it won't stop there… In Kursk, it started and it has already reached us,” says Lioubov Sbrodova, a resident of a nearby building, referring to this Russian border region targeted by a Ukrainian offensive.

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“Our authorities are not doing everything they should to ensure the security of our city,” complains this 33-year-old manager, who says she was woken up at four in the morning by a first strong explosion.

On Telegram, the governor of the region said he had gone to the scene. According to him, about 50 apartments were damaged and debris from the drone that fell to the ground still needs to be “cleared”.

Flights from several airports were disrupted. Early in the morning, a spokesman for the civil aviation agency said that restrictions at Moscow's Vnukovo, Domodedovo and Zhukovsky airports had been lifted.

– Capture of a Ukrainian city –

On the front, despite the surprise cross-border attack launched by kyiv on August 6 in the Kursk region, Moscow is steadily gaining ground in the Ukrainian region of Donetsk (east), which remains the epicentre of the fighting.

Ukraine: the front line near Donetsk © AFP – Nalini LEPETIT-CHELLA, Sabrina BLANCHARD, Valentin RAKOVSKY

On Tuesday, the Russian Defense Ministry claimed the capture of three villages and the town of Krasnogorivka, which was long a stronghold of the Ukrainian army, about twenty kilometers west of Donetsk.

Krasnogorivka, which had about 16,000 inhabitants before the conflict, had become more vulnerable since the beginning of the year with the fall of Marinka and Avdiivka, two other nearby towns.

The Russian army regularly claims the capture of small villages, but it is rarer for this to concern cities.

Former Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, who was dismissed in May 2024, said that Ukraine's Kursk offensive was aimed at “forcing” Moscow to negotiate and redeploy troops fighting in eastern Ukraine, but that the plan had failed.

“We have enough forces, we continue to attack” in the Donetsk region, Shoigu, now secretary of the Russian Security Council, said in an interview with public television broadcast on Tuesday.

On Monday, the Russian army also claimed responsibility for capturing another village in the Donetsk region near the town of Pokrovsk, towards which its troops have been advancing rapidly in recent years. weeks.

Pokrovsk, an important logistical hub for Ukrainian troops, has been the target for several weeks of Russian forces superior in both men and weapons.

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