The drone strike on Moscow last week may have deliberately targeted the homes of Russian intelligence officers, an investigation has found.
US officials said that the attack that hit Russia’s wealthy suburb as well as two blocks of flats in the city was part of Ukraine’s strategy of psychological warfare against Russia.
A senior official and a Congress staffer said the targets included Moscow homes of Russian foreign intelligence officers, according to NBC.
The brazen attack first hit several cottage communities outside Moscow, including those home to senior defence ministry officials and some of Russia’s richest men, before two other drones crossed the city’s beltway and flew south-west.
Two targets in Moscow initially appeared to be random blocks of flats in the well-to-do south-west area.
A Utah-based intelligence start-up on Wednesday cited open-source data suggesting that at least one of the blocks could be linked to the SVR, Russia’s foreign intelligence agency.
The building at Leninsky 92k1 is owned by a Russian state-controlled company that has also had contacts with a military unit previously reported as a cover for the SVR, according to Strider Technologies.
The SVR’s sprawling headquarters are situated just outside the south-western section of Moscow’s beltway, and its employees are known to prefer the city’s south-west as a place to live.
A two-bedroom apartment on sale at Leninsky 92k1, one of the buildings that was hit, is advertised online at 66 million rubles (£600,000).
The SVR did not report that any of its employees were injured in the attack and no hospital admissions were reported in Moscow at the time.
Ukrainian officials bragged about the attack but publicly denied any links to it.
Other reports suggested that the drones may have been launched by Ukraine sympathisers inside Russia rather than sent in from across the border several hundred kilometres away as previously thought.
The drone models were not identified and it was not clear if they used any American technology.
US officials have repeatedly said they do not condone Ukraine using American weapons on targets inside Russia.
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