Bright flashes lit up the night sky in southern Moscow in the early hours of Thursday morning, new footage appears to show, following reports of an explosion at an electrical substation on the outskirts of the city.
Video snippets circulating on Russian-language Telegram channels show a series of flashes on the horizon of a cloudy night sky, momentarily turning the sky a number of different colors. In a clip shared by Russian outlet MSK1.ru, smoke can be seen rising from a building during the flashes lighting up the scene.
Newsweek was unable to independently verify the details of the video clips, including when and where it was filmed. The Russian Ministry of Emergency situations has been contacted via email.
Several Russian Telegram accounts said early on Thursday that residents of southern Moscow reported an explosion and a fire breaking out at an electrical substation in the Leninsky district, southeast of central Moscow.
Telegram/Strana.ua
Local authorities in the Leninsky district told Russian outlet RBC that the explosion had happened in the village of Molokovo. “All vital facilities are operating as normal,” Leninsky district officials told the outlet.
The incident at the substation in Molokovo took place just before 2 a.m. local time, MSK1.ru reported.
Messages published by the ASTRA Telegram account, run by independent Russian journalists, appear to show residents close to the substation panicking as they question the bright flashes in the sky. One local resident describes seeing the bright light before losing access to electricity, with another calling the incident a “nightmare.”
More than 10 villages and towns in the southeast of Moscow lost access to electricity, the ASTRA Telegram account also reported. The town of Lytkarino to the southeast of Moscow, lost electricity, wrote the eastern European-based independent outlet, Meduza.
Outages were reported in the southern Domodedovo area of the city, according to another Russian outlet, as well as power failures in western Moscow. Electricity was then restored to the areas, the Strana.ua outlet reported.
The cause of the reported explosion is not known. A Telegram account aggregating news for the Lytkarino area described the incident as “an ordinary accident at a substation.”
The MSK1.ru outlet quoted a local resident who speculated that a drone may have been responsible for the explosion, but no other Russian source reported this as a possible cause.
Ukraine has repeatedly targeted Moscow with long-range aerial drones in recent months, including a dramatic wave of strikes in late May.
On Sunday, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said the region’s air defense systems had intercepted an aerial drone over the city of Elektrostal, to the east of Moscow. No damage or casualties were reported, he said.
The previous day, Russian air defenses detected and shot down another drone flying over the Bogorodsky district, northeast of central Moscow, Sobyanin said.
There is currently no evidence that an aerial drone was responsible for the reported overnight explosion at the electrical substation in southern Moscow.
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.