On Tuesday, Ukraine struck the Moscow region in its most extensive drone attack so far on the Russian capital, killing at least one woman, destroying dozens of homes, and forcing around 50 flights to be diverted from airports around Moscow.

Mumbai: Russia, the world’s largest nuclear power, said it had destroyed at least 20 Ukrainian attack drones as they swarmed over the Moscow region, with more than 21 million residents, and 124 more over eight other areas.

At least one person was killed near Moscow, the authorities in Russia said. Three of the four airports in Moscow were shut down for over six hours, and close to 50 flights were diverted.

The drone attack was another sign of the real nature of Ukraine’s political leadership, which is made up of enemies of Russia, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters, according to a report by Reuters news agency.

Attacks on residential areas at night, Peskov said, cannot be connected with military actions. He called the Ukrainian government hostile and thus insisted that Russia needs to continue its military activity in order to protect itself against Ukraine.

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Kyiv said Russia, which in February 2022 sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine, had attacked it overnight with 46 drones, of which 38 were destroyed. A spate of drone attacks on Russia has damaged high-rise apartment buildings in the Ramenskoye district of the Moscow region, sending flats on fire, residents said.

A 46-year-old woman was killed, and three people were wounded in Ramenskoye, Moscow regional governor Andrei Vorobyov said. Residents said they awoke to blasts and fire. “I looked at the window and saw a ball of fire,” Alexander Li, a resident of the district, said. “The window got blown out by the shockwave.”

Georgy, a resident, said he heard a drone buzzing outside his building in the early hours. I pulled the curtain back, and it hit the building right before my eyes; I saw it all,” he said. “I took my family, and we ran outside.

According to official data, some quarter of a million people live in the Ramenskoye district, 50 km southeast of the Kremlin. Russia’s defense ministry said more than 70 drones were also downed over Russia’s Bryansk region and tens more over other areas. There was no damage or casualties there.

Kyiv has taken the war to Russia since Moscow’s advances in eastern Ukraine, mounting a cross-border attack into the western Kursk region on Aug 6 and carrying out increasingly large drone attacks deep into Russian territory.

For much of that time, it has been a grinding artillery and drone war along the 1,000 km heavily fortified front line in southern and eastern Ukraine involving hundreds of thousands of soldiers. Moscow and Kyiv have both tried to buy and develop new drones, use them in innovative ways, and seek new ways to destroy them – from using shotguns to advanced electronic jamming systems.

Both sides have turned cheap commercial drones into deadly weapons while scaling up their manufacturing and assembly to strike targets, including tanks and energy infrastructure such as refineries and AI.