Another drone attack on Moscow on the morning of July 4 forced Moscow authorities to print the local budget.
Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin signed an order to allocate funds from the city treasury to improve air defense (air defense) systems, the press service of the capital’s government said on Tuesday.
The grant from Moscow’s budget – the largest among all Russian subdivisions – will be given to the Almaz NPO named after Academician Raspletin, developer of the S-300, S-400 and S-500 surface-to-air missile systems.
The money allocated from the city budget will be spent on improvement of low-altitude target detection means, including unmanned aerial vehicles, according to the message on the site of the mayor’s office.
“The improvement of the airspace monitoring system will increase the safety of the population and infrastructure facilities of the Moscow region”, the capital’s government stresses.
The mayor’s office does not specify the size of the grant. The capital budget for 2023 is made with the deficiency of 436 billion rubles. At incomes in 3,746 trillion rubles from which third should come in the form of the income tax of physical persons, authorities intend to spend 4,183 trillion.
President Vladimir Putin announced about the problems with the air defense systems around Moscow, which cannot cope with the destruction of drones, on May 30 – the day of the largest attack, when the devices of “aircraft type” crashed into multi-story buildings in the south-west of the capital and almost hit the residence of Putin himself in Novo-Ogarevo.
Moscow’s air defense system needs to be “tightened”, Putin said at the time, adding that although the systems worked “normally”, there was still “work to be done.
Since then, drones have attacked Moscow twice. On June 21, there was a raid on New Moscow, which the Defense Ministry called a terrorist attack, blaming Kyiv.
On July 4, at least three drones were shot down near the Vnukovo airport, which was shut down for three hours. On May 4, drones attacked the Kremlin, which Russian authorities viewed as an “assassination attempt” on Putin.
