A drone attack targeted Pskov airport in northwestern Russia overnight from Tuesday to Wednesday, regional governor Mikhail Vedernikov announced.
“The Ministry of Defense is repelling a drone attack at Pskov airport,” Verdenikov wrote on Telegram, accompanying his message with a video where you can see a large fire and hear explosions and the howl of the sirens.
“According to initial information, there are no victims. The extent of the destruction is being clarified,” he added, indicating that he had been personally on site since the start of the incident. The official TASS news agency, citing the rescue services, four Il-76 heavy cargo planes were damaged.
Closed airspace
The airspace above Vnukovo International Airport in southwest Moscow has also been closed to traffic, TASS said, citing “aviation services”.
Other explosions were reported in the city of Bryansk, Russia, near the border with Belarus.
Drone attacks against Russian territory and the peninsula of Crimea annexed in 2014 have become almost daily in recent weeks, targeting in particular the capital Russian, against the backdrop of a kyiv counter-offensive that began in early June. The Pskov region had already been attacked by drones at the end of May.
On Monday, Russia claimed to have thwarted nighttime drone attacks in the regions of Moscow and Bryansk (west). Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky welcomed at the end of July that “the war is coming to Russian territory”.