MOSCOW (Reuters) -Russian air defence forces downed 12 Ukrainian drones flying towards Moscow, the city’s mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, said on Wednesday.
Sobyanin, in a series of posts over four hours on the Telegram messaging app, noted that 12 drones headed for the capital had been repelled or destroyed.
Earlier on Wednesday the Telegram channel Shot, which has sources in Russia’s law enforcement agencies, reported that one drone had been downed in the Moscow region, while several others had been destroyed over the neighbouring Kaluga region.
Russia’s aviation watchdog said that the Zhukovsky airport in the Moscow region outside the capital and the main airport in the city of Kaluga south of Moscow had been temporarily closed.
Moscow’s Domodedovo airport, subject to periodic closures throughout the day, was operating in the early evening.
Earlier on Wednesday, the Russian Defence Ministry said its forces had downed 524 drones over the past 24 hours. The ministry did not specify the locations where the drones were destroyed.
The Russian capital is preparing to host more than 20 world leaders at a Red Square military parade on Friday to mark the victory of the Soviet Union and its allies over Nazi Germany.
Some of the leaders, like China’s Xi Jinping, flew into Russia on Wednesday.
(Reporting by Reuters, Writing by Felix Light and Maxim RodionovEditing by Andrew Osborn, Deepa Babington, Ron Popeski and Chizu Nomiyama)
