Russian air defences down eight drones en route to Moscow, mayor says

MOSCOW — Russian air defences shot down 10 drones en route to Moscow on Monday (Nov 25), the Defence Ministry said, a day after a Ukrainian strike on a power plant cut off heating in a town near the capital.

From 8am to 8pm Moscow time (1pm to 1am SGT), 50 Ukrainian drones were downed across the Moscow, Bryansk, Kaluga and Kursk regions, as well as Crimea and over the waters of the Black Sea, the ministry said in a statement.

Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said emergency services were working at sites where debris from drones bound for the capital had fallen.

Ukraine's drone strike on Sunday on the Shatura Power Station, 120km east of Moscow, forced authorities to switch on backup power and deploy mobile heating systems to the town of 33,000, where temperatures hovered around freezing.

On Monday, local governor Andrei Vorobyov said that the plant had resumed operations.

In recent weeks and months, there have been repeated power and heat outages in parts of Ukraine due to Russian attacks in the full-scale war that erupted in February 2022.

Ukraine has also hit some power and heating installations in Ukrainian regions controlled by Russian forces and in Russian regions neighbouring Ukraine.

But Kyiv has thus far not inflicted major damage on electricity and heat stations serving Moscow and the surrounding region, which has a population of more than 22 million.

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