Ukraine Uses Balloons in Drone Attack on Russia

The Russian military faced the massive use of unknown balloons during a long-range drone attack on Moscow and Tatarstan.

Russian media RBC reported on this.

Sources in the Russian defense ministry claim that the peculiarity of the nighttime drone attack on Russian regions was the large number of balloons used in it. This was the first time they were used on a massive scale since the beginning of drone attacks.

“There were really a lot of balloons, and they have no accuracy,” a source familiar with the night attack stated.

In the morning, the Russian Defense Ministry announced that 69 Ukrainian drones had been shot down overnight, but no balloons were mentioned in the report. Instead, Russian monitoring resources recorded their appearance.

The Russian resource Rossiya Radar tracked the flight of balloons in the Moscow region and Moscow, Chuvashia and Tatarstan, Yaroslavl, and Tver regions.

According to the resource, the detected objects near the Russian capital flew at an altitude of about 10 kilometers and allegedly carried a payload – a warhead.

It is noteworthy that large passenger and transport aircraft fly at the declared altitude. The appearance of unidentified objects on these echelons could disrupt air traffic and harm the operation of Russian air defense systems.

This version is confirmed by the footage of the incident with the night flight of a heavy transport aircraft An-124 Ruslan at ultra-low altitudes directly over Moscow’s buildings on the night of September 23.

On Monday evening, the mayor of Moscow announced 41 downed drones that were “flying at Moscow.” The attack caused a halt in air travel, but local officials have not reported any consequences on the ground.

In the skies over Moscow, local residents recorded the flight of drones with an aerodynamic scheme typical of Ukrainian UJ-22 Beaver aircraft. The fall of unknown objects, which sounded like a jet drone or an anti-aircraft missile, was recorded in the Moscow region.

As a reminder, on the night of September 20, Ukrainian drones struck the Saratov and Novokuibyshev oil refineries, causing large-scale fires.