Istanbul–Moscow flight turns back amid major drone attack on Russian capital
Ankara: A Turkish Airlines passenger flight bound for Moscow was forced to return to Istanbul early on Sunday after flying into Russian airspace during a large-scale Ukrainian drone attack on the Russian capital, flight data and Turkish media said.
The Airbus A330-300 operating flight TK407 took off from Istanbul at 2.22 a.m. local time (2322 GMT Saturday) for Moscow’s Vnukovo airport. After approaching the city, the aircraft aborted its landing, reversed course and touched down safely back in Istanbul.
Air traffic disruptions quickly spread across Turkey–Russia routes. At least 35 flights run by Turkish carriers to and from Vnukovo were delayed or cancelled, according to Xinhua News Agency.
The diversion came as Moscow and other Russian regions came under a heavy overnight drone assault. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said air defences had brought down more than 1,600 unmanned aircraft nationwide since Saturday, with roughly 450 of them heading towards the capital.
In a separate update on Friday, Russia’s Defence Ministry said its forces had launched two major and five smaller strikes over the past week against Ukrainian defence factories, logistics nodes, energy and transport facilities, and had captured ten settlements. The targets listed included plants involved in defence, metallurgy, automotive and electronics production; military supply and distribution centres; fuel, power, rail and road infrastructure; workshops and storage sites for drones; ammunition and fuel depots; ports; and positions used by Ukrainian troops and foreign fighters.
Russian officials also claimed attacks on maritime targets, saying 12 Ukrainian dry cargo vessels, two ferries, a tanker and a tug had been hit. Over the same period, Moscow said its air defences intercepted 44 guided aerial bombs, eight HIMARS rocket rounds, two Neptune long-range missiles and 5,706 drones.
On Wednesday, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned that any deployment of Western troops on Ukrainian territory would be treated by Russia as a direct declaration of war. “We have no interest in such a scenario,” he told the International Festival of Youth in Yekaterinburg, adding that if European countries that “talk every day about preparing for war against Russia” were to attack the Russian Federation, “that will be a completely different war, and it will be very short.”
Lavrov said Moscow remained willing to pursue a diplomatic solution, including under a trilateral format recently proposed by the United States, but stressed that any settlement must meet the objectives Russia set at the start of the conflict and address what it sees as the root causes of the war.
(Inputs from IANS)