Moscow claims it downed 146 drones in a single night: four airports shut, the war has reached the runways

According to Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin, Russian air defences shot down 146 Ukrainian drones heading for the capital overnight from October 13 to 14 - 116 between midnight and 5:37 am, and another 30 the previous evening. The figure is Russian and nobody on the other side has confirmed it. But what can't be hidden is the picture at the airports.

Russia's civil aviation agency, Rosaviatsia, imposed temporary restrictions on take-offs and landings at four Moscow airports - Vnukovo, Domodedovo, Zhukovsky and Sheremetyevo. The restrictions began around 10 pm, and Sheremetyevo closed shortly before midnight. According to Russian media, more than 30 passenger planes due to land in Moscow were diverted to alternate airports.

It was worst at Vnukovo, where 19 planes couldn't land - flights from Sharm el-Sheikh, Hurghada, Dubai, St Petersburg, Astana, Baku, Antalya and Istanbul. The planes ended up in St Petersburg, Nizhny Novgorod, Minsk, Pskov and Istanbul. Pulkovo airport in St Petersburg took in more than 20 aircraft, passengers were offloaded into the terminal, and the management advised those travelling on to Moscow to consider the train.

At the same time, drones also attacked the Saratov region. In the town of Balakovo several apartment buildings were damaged, and Governor Roman Busargin confirmed that, according to preliminary information, one person was killed. "All the relevant services are working at the scene," he said. Claims emerged that the targets were energy facilities and a data processing centre in the area, but the Russian authorities have so far not confirmed that any of them was hit. Because of the danger, Saratov's Gagarin airport was also temporarily closed.

This wasn't an isolated night. According to Sobyanin, from the evening of October 12 to the morning of October 13 as many as 417 drones were sent toward the Moscow region, 65 of them shot down just short of the capital. For the second night in a row the Moscow sky is a front line, and night-time air traffic in the Russian capital is almost completely paralysed.

The political context is even tenser. Washington is already publicly criticising Kyiv for its strikes on Russian energy facilities, arguing that they push up fuel prices and make a deal with Moscow harder. Every new wave of drones over Moscow is a message to both the Kremlin and the White House. The Balkans know well what a war looks like when it is fought simultaneously on the ground and in phone calls between the great powers. The question is who will lose patience first - Moscow, Kyiv or Washington?