Moscow airports shutdown after Ukraine fires more than 230 drones

Russia was forced to temporarily close all four major airports in Moscow after Ukraine fired more than 230 drones over the weekend, officials said.

At least 140 flights were canceled across Moscow following Ukraine’s counterattack, which began Saturday morning, with 27 drones intercepted over the capital, according to Russia’s defense ministry.

The capital’s airports were shut down 10 times in the last 24 hours due to the drone strikes, according to Russia’s Association of Tour Operators (ATOR), the latest travel chaos the Kremlin has endured as it pushes forward with its invasion of Ukraine.

The attacks also caused the Kaluga International Airport, which lies southwest of Moscow, to temporarily shut down after 45 drones were intercepted in the region.

The frantic weekend echoes the mass closures Russia saw back in May, where more than 500 drone attacks left some 60,000 passengers stranded in airports across the country, the BBC reported.

Ukraine has vowed to step up its drone attacks on Russia to keep pace with the Kremlin’s mass bombardment campaign, which has claimed the lives of dozens of civilians in recent weeks.

Russia’s Ministry of Defense said that it intercepted the drones along the regions bordering Ukraine, including in Rostov and Bryansk, as well as over the Black Sea. No casualties were reported.

Kyiv’s attack comes as Moscow itself fired more than 300 drones over the border, killing two people in Donetsk and a 78-year-old woman in Sumy, regional officials said.

The latest wave came early Sunday, with 57 drones fired into Sumy, Donetsk, Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk, and Zaporizhzhia, all of which are current hotspots of the war.

Amid the drone exchange, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky invited his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to meet directly with him for a new round of talks aimed at securing a cease-fire.

“A meeting at the leadership level is needed to truly ensure peace,” Zelensky said.

Putin is allegedly open towards securing a peace settlement with Ukraine, but only if such talks prioritize “our goals,” Kremlin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Sunday.

Putin has previously stated that his goals include allowing Russia to keep all the territory it has taken during the war and for Ukraine to demilitarize.