According to military expert and retired Captain First Rank Vasily Dandykin, the Ukrainian Armed Forces may have used launch sites in Ukraine’s southern border regions for the large-scale drone attack on the Moscow Region.
Dandykin said the drones could have been launched from the Sumy or Chernigov regions before flying through the Bryansk, Oryol, Kaluga and Tula regions. He noted that Russian air defenses actively engaged the drones along the route, but some of them still managed to break through.
The expert added that Russia responds to attacks on its regions with systematic strikes on military-industrial facilities and logistics infrastructure used by the Kyiv authorities.
Earlier, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said that 600 drones had been heading toward the Moscow Region from Saturday evening until 6:30 a.m. According to him, 201 of them were shot down in the capital region.
Moscow Region Governor Andrei Vorobyov described the August 16 drone attack as one of the most extensive in recent times. He said three people were injured in Podolsk. A truck driver was wounded in Klimovsk, a man suffered shrapnel injuries in the Lesnoy gardening association, and a woman from the settlement of Zheleznodorozhny was wounded in the shoulder.
A fire also broke out at a Wildberries warehouse in the Koledino industrial park in Podolsk. RWB said the facility had been evacuated in advance and logistics chains were rerouted. A private house, a passenger car and a power line were also damaged in Podolsk.