Flights Briefly Grounded in Moscow, St. Petersburg after Ukrainian Drone Attacks

The attacks followed a Russian strike on western Ukraine that officials said damaged a military airfield.

Firefighters work at the site of a building hit by a Russian drone strike in Kharkiv, Ukraine, on June 7, 2025. REUTERS/Sofiia Gatilova

Civilian flights were temporarily suspended in Moscow and St. Petersburg—Russia’s capital and its second largest city—after Kyiv launched a fresh wave of cross-border drone attacks in the early hours of June 10.

Immediately following the attacks, civilian flights were temporarily suspended at Moscow’s four main airports and at St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo Airport, according to Russia’s civil aviation authority.

Temporary flight restrictions were also imposed in eight other Russian cities, Moscow’s state-run TASS news agency reported.

In a statement cited by TASS, Russia’s defense ministry said that air-defense systems had “intercepted and destroyed” more than 100 Ukrainian drones launched overnight into Russian territory.

According to the ministry, most of the drones were shot down over Russia’s western Bryansk and Belgorod regions.

Several others were downed over the Voronezh, Kaluga, Tatarstan, Orel, Smolensk, and Kursk regions, the ministry said.

It added that three other drones had been downed in the Moscow region and two in the Leningrad region, of which St. Petersburg is the regional capital.

Nine other drones, the ministry said, were downed over the Crimean Peninsula, which Moscow annexed in 2014 and which now hosts Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.

Writing on the Telegram messaging platform, Belgorod regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said a child was injured by falling drone debris.

He also said the attack had resulted in several fires that had since been extinguished by emergency services.

In a subsequent post, Gladkov said a Ukrainian drone had struck a gas station in Belgorod, killing one local resident and injuring four others.

Outside the Belgorod region, no serious damage—human or material—has yet been reported.

According to Rodion Miroshnik, a top Russian Foreign Ministry official, four people have been killed countrywide—and more than 100 injured—by Ukrainian drone and artillery attacks over the past seven days.

“The highest number of civilian casualties from Ukrainian attacks was recorded in the Belgorod and Kursk regions,” Miroshnik told TASS on June 10.

He added that Ukraine had fired almost 1,800 munitions—most of which, he said, were of Western origin—at civilian targets in Russia over the past week.

Ukrainian Airfield Struck

The latest wave of Ukrainian cross-border attacks came a day after Russia carried out its own drone attack that damaged a military airfield in western Ukraine.

Yuriy Ihnat, a spokesman for Ukraine’s air force, said the airfield—located near Ukraine’s western border—was the primary target of the attack.

“The main [Russian] strike was targeting ... one of the operational air fields,” Ihnat said in televised remarks on June 9.

“There are some hits,” he added without elaborating on the extent of the damage.

According to Ukrainian regional authorities, the targeted airfield is located in the western city of Dubno, roughly 40 miles from the Polish border.

In a statement released the same day, Ukraine’s air force said that air defenses had successfully downed 460 Russian drones and 19 of 20 incoming missiles.

A satellite image from Planet Labs PBC shows damage from a Ukrainian drone attack on the Belaya Air Base in the Irkutsk region of eastern Siberia in Russia on June 4, 2025. Planet Labs PBC via AP

Russia’s Defense Ministry said the attack on the airfield was in response to an earlier attack by Kyiv that damaged—and possibly destroyed—several Russian strategic bombers.

On June 1, Ukraine staged a series of wide-ranging drone strikes on military airfields in northern and eastern Russia thousands of miles from the frontline.

Officials in Kyiv, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, have claimed that dozens of Russian strategic bombers were successfully hit in the attack.

Moscow says none of its strategic bombers were destroyed in the June 1 attack, while admitting that some sustained significant damage.

The Epoch Times could not independently verify claims made by either side of the conflict.

Reuters contributed to this report.