Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport (file image). Photo: AFP / Natalia Kolesnikova
Major Ukrainian drone attacks on Russia sowed chaos at major airports serving Moscow on Monday, with thousands of passengers waiting in lines or sleeping on the floor after flights were cancelled or delayed, Russian media reported.
Videos published by Russian media showed people sleeping on the floor of Sheremetyevo, Russia's busiest airport by passenger numbers, amid long queues.
Russia's defence ministry said it had downed 117 drones overnight, including 30 over the Moscow region, after downing 172 drones, including 30 over the Moscow region, the previous day.
Russia's civil aviation authority, Rosaviatsiya, briefly imposed restrictions on flights overnight at Moscow's main airports - Sheremetyevo, Vnukovo, Domodedovo and Zhukovskiy.
Several thousand people were stranded in the far east of Russia due to the cancellation of flights in European Russia, while extra trains were put on to bring passengers back to Moscow from the northern Russian city of St Petersburg, Russian media said.
Moscow and its surrounding region has a population of at least 21.5 million.
Russia launches drones, missiles at Ukraine, kills one in Kyiv
Russia launched a fresh wave of drone and missile strikes on Ukraine in an overnight attack on Monday, killing one person, wounding seven others and causing multiple fires in Kyiv, city officials said.
Explosions lit up the night sky as the high-pitched whine of drone engines echoed off the walls of the capital's high-rise buildings.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said rescuers and medics were working on sites across four districts of the capital. A subway station in central Kyiv, commercial property, shops, houses and a kindergarten were damaged, city officials said.
Ukraine's air force said that Russia launched 426 drones and 24 missiles overnight across the country, but that only 23 drones hit their targets.
In another tense and sleepless night for Kyiv residents, many rushed to take shelter in underground stations. Explosions were heard across the city as air defence units engaged in repelling the attack.
At the scene of a strike, dazed residents stood amid shattered glass and scorched walls, surveying the damage after a drone hit the lower floors of an apartment building.
In the region of Ivano-Frankivsk, several hundred kilometres west of Kyiv, four people including a child were injured in the overnight attack, according to the state emergencies service.
The mayor of that region's eponymous capital said the attack was the largest on his city since the start of the war in 2022.
Ihor Terekhov, the mayor of Ukraine's second-largest city Kharkiv, said Russia had hit it with 12 strikes overnight. He said a civilian industrial facility had caught fire and windows had been blown out in an apartment building.
- Reuters
