On Sunday afternoon, what the Russian Ministry of Defense said was a Ukrainian drone, was supposed to be shot down over the small town. Now residents are shocked and angry after their lives are threatened.

This was written by the Reuters news agency.

– Completely unheard of to shoot down in a residential area. There is a field only 500 meters away. They can shoot him there. Why above our house? People were injured, Kirejevsk resident Elena, 35, told Reuters.

He would not give his full name.

– What if the children are at home? They will be killed. Nobody thought of that. They let it happen. They don’t care. I have no other explanation, continued Elena.

– The whole house shook

Three people were injured after Russia shot down a suspected Ukrainian drone over a small town in Tula Oblast, about 220 kilometers south of Moscow.

The incident in Kirejevsk must have occurred on the afternoon of Sunday 26 March.

According to the Russian Defense Ministry, several apartment blocks were also destroyed. Russia’s state-controlled news agency Tass wrote that no one was seriously injured, but that five privately owned houses were destroyed.

– NATO must look serious

– We are used to seeing these things on the Internet, but now we feel them in our bodies. Now we know what it’s like. The whole house shook, said Yuri Ovchinnikov, who Reuters said was at home with his wife when the drone was shot down.

– I graduated from an aviation academy where I specialized in flight control systems, so I know how they work. Why did they shoot it down, I wonder. They were caught sleeping in class. And they need to be honest about it, he continued.

Denies the Ukrainian attack

Authorities in Ukraine have yet to comment on the incident.

Ukraine has always denied being behind the alleged drone attacks inside Russia. In a statement on March 1, President Volodymyr Zelenskyj’s adviser, Mykhajlo Podoljak, wrote that Ukraine had not carried out the attack inside Russia.

– Ukraine waged a defensive war to reoccupy all of its territory. This is a biased assumption, wrote Podoljak.

Drone crash near Moscow: – Attack failed

The remarks came after Russian authorities reported that a drone had crashed at a Gazprom facility near the Russian capital, and that they had shot down two Ukrainian drones over southern Russia the previous night.

Podoljak believes the reported drone incident is an “internal attack”, which is an expression of “panic and disintegration in the Russian Federation”.

Don’t you dare enter

The explosion in Kirejevsk reportedly left a large crater in the center of the city, and photos and videos on social media showed a muddy crater near badly damaged buildings.

Reuters has not been able to verify these images, but has been in the city. There they witnessed destroyed houses with broken roofs and windows. The alleged crater site is closed to the media, the news agency wrote.

They also spoke with 70-year-old Svetlana, who broke down in tears as she described the damage to her home.

– We don’t know what to do. I walked into my house and the floors cracked, the walls cracked. I’m afraid to go in, he said.