All four international airports around Moscow temporarily suspended flights Tuesday as Russian forces intercepted more than 100 Ukrainian drones fired at almost a dozen Russian regions, the Defense Ministry in Moscow said.
Nine other regional Russian airports also temporarily stopped operating as drones struck areas along the border with Ukraine and deeper inside Russia, according to Russia's civil aviation agency, Rosaviatsia, and the Defense Ministry, AP reports.
The Moscow region was later attacked for a second time, with the capital's major airports of Vnukovo and Domodedovo forced to ground flights again, while the city's air defenses intercepted three drones, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said.
The drone assaults threatened a planned unilateral 72-hour ceasefire in the more than three-year war announced by President Vladimir Putin to coincide with celebrations in Moscow marking Victory Day in World War II.
The day celebrating Moscow’s defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945 is Russia’s biggest secular holiday. Chinese President Xi Jinping, Brazilian leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and others will gather in the Russian capital on Thursday for the 80th anniversary and watch a parade featuring thousands of troops accompanied by tanks and missiles.
Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry urged foreign countries not to send military representatives to take part in the parade, as some have in the past. None is officially confirmed for this year’s event.
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Ukraine will regard the participation of foreign military personnel as “an affront to the memory of the victory over Nazism, to the memory of millions of Ukrainian front-line soldiers who liberated our country and all of Europe from Nazism eight decades ago,” a statement on the ministry’s website said.
Security is expected to be tight. Russian officials have warned that internet access could be restricted in Moscow during the celebrations and have told residents not to set off fireworks.
Putin last week declared the brief unilateral truce “on humanitarian grounds” from May 8. Ukraine has demanded a longer ceasefire.
Russia has effectively rejected a US proposal for an immediate and full 30-day halt in the fighting by insisting on far-reaching conditions. Ukraine has accepted that proposal, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says.