A rare drone at­tack jolt­ed Moscow Tues­day morn­ing, light­ly dam­ag­ing some build­ings and lead­ing to the evac­u­a­tion of oth­ers, while Rus­sia pur­sued its re­lent­less bom­bard­ment of Kyiv with a third as­sault on the city in 24 hours.

The Russ­ian de­fense min­istry said five drones were shot down and the sys­tems of three oth­ers were jammed, caus­ing them to veer off course. It called the in­ci­dent a “ter­ror­ist at­tack” by the “Kyiv regime.”

The at­tack brought the war to civil­ians at home in Rus­sia’s cap­i­tal for the first time. It caused “in­signif­i­cant dam­age” to sev­er­al build­ings, ac­cord­ing to Moscow May­or Sergei Sobyanin. Two peo­ple re­ceived med­ical at­ten­tion for un­spec­i­fied in­juries but did not need hos­pi­tal­iza­tion, he said in a Telegram post. Res­i­dents of two high-rise build­ings dam­aged in the at­tack were evac­u­at­ed, Sobyanin said.

An­drei Voroby­ov, gov­er­nor of the wider Moscow re­gion, said some of the drones were “shot down on the ap­proach to Moscow.”

Ukraine made no di­rect com­ment on the at­tack, which would be one of its deep­est and most dar­ing strikes in­to Rus­sia since the Krem­lin launched its full-scale in­va­sion of Ukraine more than 15 months ago.

Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin start­ed work ear­ly on Tues­day to re­ceive in­for­ma­tion about the drone at­tack from var­i­ous gov­ern­ment agen­cies, Krem­lin spokesman Dmit­ry Peskov told re­porters.

Putin isn’t plan­ning to ad­dress the na­tion in the wake of the as­sault, he said.

Asked by the As­so­ci­at­ed Press whether there is con­cern in the Krem­lin that the in­va­sion of Ukraine is en­dan­ger­ing Russ­ian civil­ians, Peskov said on­ly that at­tacks on Rus­sia re­in­force the need to pros­e­cute the war.

Russ­ian po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Ta­tiana Stanovaya, a se­nior fel­low at the Carnegie Rus­sia Eura­sia Cen­ter, said the Krem­lin’s pol­i­cy is to down­play the at­tacks.

“You ask, why is Putin be­hav­ing like this, does he re­al­ly not un­der­stand and fear the con­se­quences?” she wrote in a Telegram post. “Ap­par­ent­ly he isn’t afraid, and every­thing is built on the idea that has been voiced more than once about a pa­tient peo­ple who will un­der­stand every­thing and en­dure every­thing.”

Still, the at­tacks have raised ques­tions about the ef­fec­tive­ness of Rus­sia’s air de­fense sys­tems.

A se­nior Russ­ian law­mak­er, An­drei Kar­tapolov, told Russ­ian busi­ness news site RBC that “we have a very big coun­try and there will al­ways be a loop­hole where the drone can fly around the ar­eas where air de­fense sys­tems are lo­cat­ed.”

Kar­tapolov said the pur­pose of the at­tacks was to un­nerve the Russ­ian peo­ple. “It’s an in­tim­i­da­tion act aimed at the civil­ian pop­u­la­tion,” RBC quot­ed him as say­ing. “It’s de­signed to cre­ate a wave of pan­ic.”

Moscow res­i­dents re­port­ed hear­ing ex­plo­sions be­fore dawn. Po­lice were seen work­ing at one site of a crashed drone in south­west Moscow. An area near a res­i­den­tial build­ing was fenced off, and po­lice put the drone de­bris in a card­board box be­fore car­ry­ing it away.

At an­oth­er site, apart­ment win­dows were shat­tered and there were scorch marks on the build­ing’s front.

It was the sec­ond re­port­ed at­tack on Moscow. Russ­ian au­thor­i­ties said two drones tar­get­ed the Krem­lin ear­li­er this month in what they por­trayed as an at­tempt on Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin’s life.

Ukrain­ian drones have re­port­ed­ly flown deep in­to Rus­sia mul­ti­ple times. In De­cem­ber, Rus­sia claimed it had shot down drones at air­fields in the Sara­tov and Ryazan re­gions in west­ern Rus­sia. Three sol­diers were re­port­ed killed in the at­tack in Sara­tov, which tar­get­ed an im­por­tant mil­i­tary air­field.

Be­fore that, Rus­sia re­port­ed shoot­ing down a Ukrain­ian drone that tar­get­ed the head­quar­ters of its Black Sea Fleet in Sev­astopol in Rus­sia-an­nexed Crimea.

In Ukraine, Rus­sia launched a pre-dawn air raid on Kyiv, killing at least one per­son and send­ing the cap­i­tal’s res­i­dents again scram­bling in­to shel­ters.

At least 20 Sha­hed ex­plo­sive drones were de­stroyed by air de­fense forces in Kyiv’s air­space in Rus­sia’s lat­est at­tack on the Ukrain­ian cap­i­tal. Over­all, Ukraine shot down 29 of 31 drones fired in­to the coun­try, most of them in the Kyiv area, the air force said.

Be­fore day­light, the buzzing of drones could be heard over the city, fol­lowed by loud ex­plo­sions as they were tak­en down by air de­fense sys­tems.

A woman who was killed in Kyiv’s Holosi­iv dis­trict died af­ter she had “come out on­to her bal­cony to look at drones be­ing shot down,” May­or Vi­tali Kl­itschko said in a Telegram post.

A high-rise build­ing in the same dis­trict caught fire af­ter be­ing hit by de­bris ei­ther from from drones be­ing hit or in­ter­cep­tor mis­siles. The build­ing’s up­per two floors were de­stroyed, and peo­ple were feared to be ly­ing un­der the rub­ble, the Kyiv Mil­i­tary Ad­min­is­tra­tion said. More than 20 peo­ple were evac­u­at­ed.

Res­i­dent Va­leriya Ore­shko told The As­so­ci­at­ed Press in the af­ter­math that even though the im­me­di­ate threat was over, the at­tacks had every­one on edge.

“You are hap­py that you are alive, but think about what will hap­pen next,” the 39-year-old said.

A res­i­dent who gave on­ly her first name, Ok­sana, said the whole build­ing shook when it was hit.

“Go to shel­ters, be­cause you re­al­ly do not know where (the drone) will fly,” she ad­vised oth­ers.

Else­where in the cap­i­tal, falling de­bris caused a fire in a pri­vate house in Darnyt­skyi dis­trict and three cars were set alight in Pech­er­sky dis­trict, ac­cord­ing to the mil­i­tary ad­min­is­tra­tion.

The se­ries of at­tacks that be­gan Sun­day in­clud­ed a rare day­light at­tack Mon­day that left puffs of white smoke in the blue skies. —KYIV, Ukraine (AP)

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Sto­ry by SUSIE BLANN and JOAN­NA KO­ZLOWS­KA | As­so­ci­at­ed Press

As­so­ci­at­ed Press writer Vasil­isa Stepa­nenko in Kyiv, Ukraine; David Ris­ing in Bangkok; and Yuras Kar­manau in Tallinn, Es­to­nia con­tributed to this re­port. Joan­na Ko­zlows­ka re­port­ed from Tallinn, Es­to­nia.