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Russian air defenses intercepted dozens of suicide drones over Crimea early on March 3, foiling one of the largest Ukrainian aerial attacks on the Peninsula.
“An attempt by the Kiev regime to carry out a terrorist attack using 38 unmanned aerial vehicles was prevented,” the Russian Ministry of Defense said in a brief statement, adding that all hostile targets were destroyed by the air defenses.
Videos posted to social media showed several of the Ukrainian drones being shot down by anti-aircraft missiles over different parts of Crimea.
There were no reports of any casualties or material losses in Crimea. Still, Russian authorities announced several closures of parts of the highway leading to the Crimean Bridge as well as the crossing itself overnight.
The attack was the latest in a series of drone strikes launched by the Kiev regime against Russian territory in recent days.
Late on March 2, the Russian MoD announced that air defenses destroyed a Ukrainian drone over the Gulf of Finland in the Leningrad region.
“The Kiev regime’s attempt to carry out a terrorist attack using a fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicle against facilities in the Russian Federation was thwarted. The air defense units on duty destroyed the Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicle over the Leningrad Region,” the ministry said in a statement.
Leningrad Governor Alexander Drozdenko said that air defenses operated over the Lomonosov district in the Leningrad Region to destroy several aerial targets. The nearby port of Bronka was not damaged. There are no casualties or material losses as a result of the incident, Drozdenko said. Operations at Pulkovo Airport were briefly suspended.
Around the same time, two other Ukrainian drones were intercepted over the Belograd region, according to the Russian MoD, which didn’t report any losses.
Earlier on the same day, a drone hit a residential building in the northern part of the city of Saint Petersburg. The Health Committee of the city reported that six civilians sought medical help following the incident. Authorities evacuated 100 others from the scene. The Kiev regime was likely responsible.
In a separate attack, a Ukrainian combat drone attacked a team of the Russian Investigative Committee in a border area of the Bryansk region. The committee said that four people had sustained various wounds in the attack.
Emergency services in the region told TASS that one of the wounded was in a serious condition, while the remaining three sustained light injuries.
Ukraine stepped up attacks on Russian territory after losing the strategic city of Avdeevka in the Donetsk region last month. The Kiev regime apparently sees attacks on Russian territory as a way to make up for its never ending failures on the battlefields.
The Russian military usually responds to Ukrainian attacks by launching large-scale missile and drone strikes against high-value targets of Kiev forces.
