Moscow’s 4 airports closed temporarily for unspecified security reasons
MOSCOW — Russian authorities on Thursday closed all four of Moscow’s airports, plus a fifth one in a city about 100 miles southwest of the country’s capital, citing unspecified safety concerns.
The five airports were “temporarily not accepting or sending flights,” according to a statement from Russia’s aviation authority, Rosaviatsia.
“To ensure the safety of civil aircraft flights, temporary restrictions have been introduced on the operation of Sheremetyevo, Domodedovo, Vnukovo, Zhukovsky and Kaluga airports,” Rosaviatsia said in a post on Telegram.
All four of Moscow airports reopened after being briefly closed, with the fifth airport, in Kaluga, reopening later on Thursday afternoon.
Officials did not give an immediate or precise reason for the closures.
“Aircraft crews, air traffic controllers and airport services take all necessary measures to ensure flight safety — this is the top priority,” the official statement posted to Telegram said.
Nearly two years after President Vladimir Putin invaded Russia’s smaller neighbor, Ukraine has pushed the war into Russia.
On Thursday, air raid sirens sounded in the Oryol region and in Sevastopol in Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed from Ukraine after invading in 2014. Sirens were also reported in the Russian city of Taganrog, located in Rostov, which borders Ukraine, local authorities said in a post to Telegram.
Two Ukrainian missiles were shot down in the Kursk region with no damage or casualties, according to a post on the Kursk region Telegram channel, after it was announced that the five Russian airports had been shut down.
A third Ukrainian missile was shot down in Kursk shortly after Moscow’s airports reopened, officials said.
This comes a month after Ukraine launched its largest drone attack on Moscow since the full-scale war began.
The airports temporary closures come on the same day that the Kremlin warned against speculating what may have caused an Azerbaijan Airlines flight to crash, killing 38 of the 67 people on board, after an aviation expert said evidence indicated that a Russian anti-missile battery may have brought down the passenger plane.
There is growing speculation that Russian air defenses may have been behind the crash, which occurred as the plane approached Grozny, its destination. Chechnya was being attacked by drones at the time.
“Subsequent reporting and contextual information, including the follow-on video examination of the wreckage,” indicated that “the flight was likely shot down by a Russian air defense system,” said Matthew Borie, chief intelligence officer at the aviation security firm Osprey Flight Solutions, in an interview with NBC News.
On Wednesday, many Ukrainians were forced to celebrate Christmas without heat or power after Russia launched an attack on the country’s energy infrastructure.
Lena Medvedeva reported from Moscow and Hannah Peart from London.
