A Ukrainian drone has struck an airport inside Russia in another major blow to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
In total, 13 flights were delayed and one cancelled at Sochi International Airport on the Black Sea coast in the wake of the attack.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said the Ukrainian drone was shot down by air defences over Krasnodar Krai region.
Footage shared on X, formerly Twitter, appears to show the moment the drone explodes. Express.co.uk has been unable to independently verify the clip.
Russian state media organisation, Tass, reported that at about 8.00am Moscow time (6am GMT) on Sunday (October 1) a bid by the Ukraine to carry out “a terrorist attack” against facilities inside Russia using a fixed-wing drone “was foiled”.
It quoted Russia’s Defence Ministray as stating: “The Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicle was destroyed over the territory of the Krasnodar Region by duty air defence systems.”
The flights hub is among the 10 largest airports in Russia with an annual passenger turnover in 2016 of 5.2 million, according to TASS.
It was also the main entry point into the resort city during the 2014 Winter Olympic Games.
The latest humiliating attack inside Russia comes after the country was pummelled by a series of drone strikes which the country’s defence ministry blamed on “terrorists”.
One drone was shot down over Kaluga, with an additional 10 downed in a wider offensive over the Kursk region. Details about damage or casualties were not provided by the ministry.
Roman Starovoit, the governor of the Russian city of Kursk, revealed one of the drones dropped “two explosive devices on a substation” in the Belaya settlement in the Belovsky district.
This resulted in a transformer catching fire and led to power outages at five settlements and a hospital.
Meanwhile, the governor of Ukraine’s partly occupied southern Zaporizhzhia region, Yurii Malashko, said five people were wounded on Saturday (September 30) in two missile strikes on the village of Matviivka, on the northeastern outskirts of the regional capital, also called Zaporizhzhia.
Ukraine’s air force said its air defences shot down 30 out of 40 Iranian-made kamikaze drones aimed at Odesa, Mykolaiv and Vinnytsia provinces overnight.
Vinnytsia regional Governor Serhii Borzov said air defences shot down 20 drones over his central Ukrainian region, and a “powerful fire” broke out in the town of Kalynivka when a drone struck an unspecified infrastructure facility.
Romania’s Ministry of National Defence said a possible unauthorized entry into its national airspace happened amid the bombardment.
