Moscow mayor: air defenses shot down 8 drones headed for the capital

Moscow's air defenses knocked eight drones out of the sky as they flew toward the capital, Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said in an early-morning update. Emergency services crews were working at the spots where debris from the intercepted drones came down, he wrote on his Telegram channel. Sobyanin gave no further detail on what the drones were targeting.

The claim lands while Ukraine's capital is on edge. Air raid sirens sounded in Kyiv on Tuesday amid what Fox correspondent Trey Yingst described as a possible ballistic missile attack from Russia, according to Breaking The News. Ukrainian media also reported that Russians are preparing a potential “massive strike” on Kyiv, the Kyiv region and Dnipro in central Ukraine.

Kyiv's power system is already reeling. Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko said the electricity supply situation in the city is “extremely difficult,” pointing to Russian attacks that have hammered the country's single power system. State operator Ukrenergo introduced emergency outages as engineers scrambled to restore service, and Klitschko said both generation and transmission are damaged, along with facilities at the Kyiv regional power hub.

Energy Minister Denys Shmyhal warned the strikes pose a danger to the “nuclear safety of all of Europe.” He said Kyiv notified the International Atomic Energy Agency about a Russian drone strike on a substation critical to the stable operation of the Khmelnytskyi Nuclear Power Plant, adding that three drones were aimed at it. He called the strike a “serious escalation.”

Diplomacy is grinding on alongside the fighting. President Volodymyr Zelensky said he met with German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier to discuss diplomatic efforts to end the conflict and Europe's role in bringing peace closer. Zelensky said team-level negotiations are set for Brussels with the United States, NATO, Europe and Ukraine, and that preparations are underway for a meeting in Abu Dhabi.