A huge fire raged close to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s official residence early Friday, emergency services said.
The inferno broke out at a storehouse on Green Street in Odintsovo, about four miles away from Putin’s lavish presidential estate in the town of Novo-Ogaryovo west of the capital, the state news agency TASS said.
There was no immediate word on how the fire had started, but there was no mention from either Ukraine or Russia about a possible drone strike.
Russia’s emergency service said a warehouse just four miles from Putin’s presidential residence was on fire in Odintsovo, TASS news agency reported. Reuters
The size of the blaze was around 21,500 square feet, TASS reported.
It is unknown what caused the fire at the warehouse near Putin’s presidential residence. APIt started late Thursday and was still more than 30,000 square feet early Friday, reported the Telegram news channel Baza.
The channel published photos from the scene showing orange flames and smoke shooting into the night sky.
A security guard at the facility in Odinstovo, located not far from Vnukovo airport, was injured when he jumped from the second floor to escape the blaze, according to Baza.
The victim was said to have fractured several ribs and was taken to a hospital.
Early Friday, Moscow’s Vnukovo airport and Kaluga airport, some 95 miles southwest of the capital, were temporarily closed due to a suspected drone flight. They later reopened and resumed flights.
Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin posted on Telegram that a Ukrainian drone was shot down over the capital, with the debris falling in the area of the Karamyshevksaya embankment. No casualties were reported.
Russia’s Defense Ministry later offered a different version of events, claiming that a drone jammed and crashed over Moscow.
On Wednesday night, Russia reported two Ukrainian drone attacks near Moscow, but they were destroyed by air defense systems.
The mystery fire in suburban Moscow Thursday comes just days after a deadly blast annihilated a fireworks warehouse on the grounds of an optics manufacturing plant 30 miles northeast of the capital.
The powerful explosion killed one person and injured 60 others, with at least a dozen people being listed as missing as of Thursday.
With Post wires
