A drone has crashed in the Moscow region, possibly trying to target civilian infrastructure, the regional governor said.
Andrei Vorobyov was speaking after the Defense Ministry downed two Ukrainian drones in southern Russia.
Ukraine does not claim responsibility for attacks inside Russia.
Russian energy giant Gazprom operates a facility near the village of Gubastovo, about 100 kilometers (62 miles) from Moscow, where the drone crashed.
Gazprom told JEE News that there were no disruptions to its operations in the Kolomna district.
Mr Vorobyov posted on Telegram that the target of the drone in Kolomna was “probably a civilian infrastructure facility, which was not damaged”.
“There are no casualties or damage on the ground. The FSB (Russian Security Service) and other competent authorities are investigating,” he added.
Photos shared by Russian media and authorities show the crashed drone in a snow-covered field in front of a forest of birch trees. The area around the Gazprom facility is heavily forested.
The drone looks similar to the UJ-22 Airborne, a product of Ukrainian manufacturer Ukrjet.
Ukrainejet says the vehicle has a range of 800 km, which is enough to reach the Kolomna region from Ukraine.
An inverted image shows no previous similarity to the image, suggesting it is more recent.
Adviser to the Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, Anton Gerashenko, tweeted a photo of the drone.
“It’s more than 500 km from the Russian border with Ukraine. Soon Putin may be too afraid to show himself in public because drones can reach so far,” he wrote alongside the photo.
If Ukraine was behind the Kolomna drone strike, it would be the closest attempted drone attack to the capital since Russia invaded Ukraine more than a year ago.
It came as the Russian Defense Ministry said its forces had shot down two Ukrainian drones in southern Russia.
The ministry accused Kiev of “attempting to use drones to attack civilian infrastructure in the Krasnodar region and the Republic of Adygea”, adding that they were “neutralized by electronic warfare units”.
Moscow has accused Ukraine of being behind attacks on Russian military infrastructure during the war, but Kiev has not confirmed this.
Three people were killed in December in a Ukrainian drone strike on an airbase for bombers in southern Russia, Moscow said. Ukraine’s military has not officially acknowledged the attack, but Air Force spokesman Yuri Ikhnat said the explosions were the result of what Russia was doing on Ukrainian soil.
A few weeks ago, Russia accused Ukraine of a similar attack on the same airport, which is home to bombers who have launched missile attacks on Ukraine.
In August, a series of explosions rocked a military base in Crimea, in what Ukraine saw as a major escalation of the conflict in Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014. Ukraine later claimed responsibility for the attack.
President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday asked the FSB to step up its activities against the rise of espionage and sabotage by Ukraine and the West.
He directed the FSB to strengthen security in Russian-held areas in eastern Ukraine. He said that the units deployed at the border should stop the subversive groups and stop the transfer of illegal arms and ammunition.
“We need to improve our counterintelligence in general, because Western special services have traditionally been very active with regard to Russia,” he said.
“And now they have deployed additional personnel, technical and other resources against us. We need to respond accordingly.”
Russia’s Defense Ministry said its fighter jets were involved in a training exercise in the country’s western airspace on Tuesday, hours after St. Petersburg’s airspace was closed due to reports of an unidentified object.
