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Strange Reaction of russian Authorities to the New Drone Attack on Moscow

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russian Pantsir-M1 air defense system / Open source illustrative photo
russian Pantsir-M1 air defense system / Open source illustrative photo

The aerial attack on Moscow was reported practically in real-time, yet caused a series of unreasonable events due to the actions of russians in the meantime

Morning of August 6th in russia started with a drone attack reported by state media. At 10:26 AM local time, the Vnukovo airport suspended all operations, Moscow mayor Sergey Sobyanin informed that an unmanned aerial vehicle was trying to reach the city around 11:00 AM. Soon the ministry of defense of russia declared the attack itself took place at 11:27 AM, the drone itself was shot down near Podolsk town, on the outskirts of Moscow.

There are also photos of allegedly the downed UAV circulating around the web which are problematic to verify. From the looks of it, the pictures were taken by a local resident.

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Podolsk is located to the south of Moscow, and what's notable here is that rather than Vnukovo, there is an airport located much closer. It is the Domodedovo airport, and it's larger, too – in fact, the second biggest russian airport after Sheremetyevo. However, there was no announcement of seizing any flights to and fro Domodedovo.

airports of near Moscow
Highlights: green – Podolsk twon, yellow – Vnukovo airport, pink – Domodedovo airport / Map credit: Google Eart / Edit by Defense Express

Another detail is that as soon as Vnukovo resumed operations, one of the first planes to take off was the Tu-214 governmental jet of the "Special Flight Squadron."

Infographics credit: Flight Radar 24

In summary, we have a situation where the drone was noticed an hour before it got taken down. provided that this type of aircraft travels at an estimated speed of 200 km/h (124 mph), it could have been detected near Tula of Kaluga if it was coming from the side of Ukraine. However, the UAV remained intact until it almost reached Moscow, and it tells a lot about the density of russian air defense around the russian capital.

Uncharacteristic is that the alleged attack happened during the daytime because usually such a mission is carried out at night or early in the morning. That is not to forget only a single drone was used, which was practically in real-time mode reported by authorities and led to selective security measures at russian airports.

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