Ukraine said on Tuesday it hit one of Russia’s largest satellite communication centers for the second time in just over a week, as Kyiv ramps up long-range drone attacks to pressure the Kremlin to end its four-year-old war, CNN reported.
The Dubna Satellite Communications Centre to the north of Moscow, some 500 km (310 miles) from the Ukrainian border, is used for intelligence gathering and the coordination of Russia’s armed forces fighting in Ukraine, President Volodymr Zelensky said.
Russia hasn’t confirmed the Dubna communication center was struck, but the governor of the Moscow region Andrey Vorobyov said a drone had hit an “administrative building” in the town with no reported casualties.
Vorobyov also said a six-month-old baby died on Tuesday after a drone crashed into a home in the Moscow region, trapping people under rubble. Rescue workers extracted two adults and two children, but the infant died on the way to hospital, Vorobyov said on his Telegram channel.
Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said Russian air defenses shot down more than 60 drones after multiple waves of drones were launched towards the Russian capital starting Monday night. Overall, the Russian Ministry of Defense claimed to have intercepted or destroyed 419 drones.
Ukraine has been increasing pressure on the Kremlin with strikes deeper into Russian territory, primarily targeting oil refineries, but also carrying out large-scale drone strikes in the Russian capital and St. Petersburg. There has been growing discontent voiced by some Russians as the war has been slowly creeping onto their doorstep and last week, Zelensky announced a 40-day operation aimed at “compelling” Russia to end the war.
It is the second time Kyiv has claimed a hit on the Dubna satellite communications center after the Ukrainian military said on June 22 it had struck the facility. Russian state news agency TASS reported it had come under a “massive drone attack” during that incident but said communications and television broadcasts had not been impacted, and no staff were injured.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov slammed Kyiv for the attack in the Moscow region, telling journalists on Tuesday that “civilians are suffering, children are dying.”
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