Dec 24 (Reuters) - Ukrainian overnight drone attacks targeted Moscow and sparked an industrial fire in the Tula region, which lies directly south of the Russian capital, regional authorities said on
Russian Defence Intercepts 25 Ukrainian Drones Near Moscow
Dec 24 (Reuters) - Russian air defence units downed 25 Moscow-bound Ukrainian drones throughout the day on Wednesday, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said.
Sobyanin, in a series of posts on the Telegram messaging app, said the drones were repelled over a period of about 23 hours. Emergency crews were examining fragments where they hit the ground, but no damage was reported.
Nine of the drones were repelled from just after 11 p.m. (2000 GMT) onward.
Two of the four major airports servicing the capital limited operations for a time, Russia's civil aviation authority said on Telegram.
The Russian Defence Ministry said its air defence units had destroyed 29 Ukrainian drones nationwide in a three-hour period ending at 11 p.m. It was not immediately clear whether these included Moscow-bound drones cited by Sobyanin.
The ministry had earlier said its air defence units destroyed 172 Ukrainian drones overnight, nearly half of them over regions bordering Ukraine.
Ukraine's military said its drones overnight had struck the Yefremov synthetic rubber plant in Russia's Tula region south of Moscow and a storage facility for marine drones in Russian-occupied Crimea.
Tula regional Governor Dmitry Milyaev said debris from a downed Ukrainian drone sparked a fire at an industrial site. He did not identify the facility. He said that Russian air defence units destroyed 12 Ukrainian drones over the region.
Ukraine has stepped up drone strikes deep inside Russia, saying it is targeting military, energy and logistics sites to disrupt Moscow's war effort, in response to Russia’s continued strikes on Ukraine.
(Reporting by Lidia Kelly in Melbourne; Editing by Himani Sarkar, Michael Perry, Ron Popeski and Edmund Klamann)
