MOSCOW: Russia said on Tuesday it had downed five Ukrainian drones in the Moscow region, calling it a "terrorist act" that briefly disrupted air traffic at an international airport in the capital.
Ukrainian authorities meanwhile announced that Russian shelling on a residential area in the southern frontline city of Kherson had killed two people.
"An attempt by the Kyiv regime to attack a zone where civil infrastructure is located, including an airport that receives international flights, is a new terrorist act," foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.
The early-morning attack is the latest in a series of recent drone incidents that Moscow has blamed on Kyiv, and have targeted both the Kremlin and cities near the border with Ukraine.
The military said it had downed all five drones and that there was no damage or casualties.
Four were destroyed by anti-air defence systems while a fifth was neutralised by "electronic means," it said.
Emergency services cited by the state-run RIA Novosti news agency said one of the drones was neutralised at Kubinka, about 40 kilometres from Vnukovo airport.
Several flights were redirected to other airports and Russia's air transport agency said traffic at Vnukovo resumed at 0500 GMT.
Russia's Federal Air Transport Agency said that other airports in Moscow and the Moscow region were operating normally.
RIA Novosti also reported that two drones had been downed near the village of Valuevo, citing emergency services.
Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin described the incident as "another Ukrainian drone attack attempt."
Drone attacks have hit Russian cities throughout Moscow's offensive in Ukraine, but have intensified in recent months.
Moscow and its environs, lying some 500 kilometres from the Ukrainian border, have up to now been rarely targeted.
In early May, two drones were shot down above the Kremlin, and later the same month drones hit Moscow high-rises.
Kyiv said early on Tuesday that Russia had launched attack drones at the Sumy, Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia regions.
It also announced that Russian shelling of the southern city of Kherson, which is regularly shelled by Russian forces, had left two residents of the city dead.
"Today began with tragic news for the Kherson region. A Russian artillery strike ended the lives of two civilians in Kherson," Oleksandr Prokudin, the head of the Kherson region's military administration said.
The drone attacks on Moscow come several weeks into a Ukrainian counter-offensive to claw back territory captured by Moscow since large-scale hostilities erupted last February. — AFP
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