Ukraine attacks Moscow with drones, airports closed for several hours

2025-05-06 08:15:00, Kosova & Bota CNA

Ukraine launched a drone attack on Moscow that forced the closure of the Russian capital's three main airports for several hours, Russian officials said.

At least 19 Ukrainian drones were destroyed as they approached Moscow, Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said on Telegram on May 6.

According to preliminary information, there were no "serious damage or injuries" at the site where the debris fell near one of the main highways leading into the city.

Flights were suspended at all four airports serving Moscow — Vnukovo, Domodedovo, Sheremetyevo and Zhukovsky — to ensure air safety, the Russian aviation agency announced on Telegram. Rosaviatsia later said flights had resumed at all four airports.

There was no immediate comment from Kiev on the drone strike, but Ukrainian officials have previously said such strikes target military targets and infrastructure used to support Moscow's war effort and are a response to ongoing Russian attacks on Ukrainian residential areas and energy infrastructure.

The governor of the Russian Kursk region, near the border with Ukraine, said earlier on May 5 that Ukrainian forces attacked a power substation in the western part of the region.

Kursk Governor Alexander Khinshtein said Ukrainian forces had struck a substation in the town of Rylsk, about 50 kilometers from the border. The attack wounded two teenagers and damaged two transformers, he said. The damage cut off power to the area.

"Dear residents, the enemy, in agony, continues to launch attacks on our territory," Khinshtein wrote on Telegram.

Irina Krynina met her partner in Ukraine after traveling from Russia when she learned he had been taken prisoner. The Russian woman decided to stay in Ukraine to help other captured Russian soldiers reconnect with their families and to help return prisoners from both sides to their homeland.

Ukrainian officials did not comment on the situation in Kursk, where Ukraine conducted a surprise incursion in August 2024, hoping to change the momentum towards a full-scale invasion of Russia and withdraw Russian forces from other areas.

Russia's top general said last month that Ukrainian troops had been driven out of Kursk, but Kiev has not acknowledged that its troops were driven out. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said that Kiev's forces continue to operate in Kursk and in the neighboring Russian region of Belgorod.

Ukraine's Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrsky said on Facebook on May 5 that the operation in Kursk "has achieved most of the set objectives" and that the buffer zone created by the Ukrainian Armed Forces "remains important."

Local authorities in the Sumy region called on residents to evacuate their homes in two towns near the Russian border, Belopolye and Vorozhba.

Ukraine's Prosecutor General's Office said Russian forces had fired artillery on two settlements in the border region of Sumy, killing three residents and wounding four.

"Sumy region. Since morning, Russia has been shelling border settlements," the Ukrainian Interior Ministry said on Telegram.

The Ukrainian military said on May 5 that its forces had struck a Russian drone command unit near Tyotkino the day before.

There is no independent confirmation of new fighting on the border./ REL