Bombing at Moscow restaurant kills three, including woman carrying the homemade explosive

AN EXPLOSION SATURDAY at a Moscow restaurant that killed three people and wounded 21 others was a bombing, Russia’s national anti-terrorism committee said, the Tass state news agency reported.

“A homemade explosive device blew up at a restaurant in Kudrinskaya Square in Moscow, killing three people,” said the committee, quoted by the Tass state news agency.

The three people killed were a woman carrying the device into the restaurant, a security agent who stopped her and a customer, the committee added.

The 21 wounded suffered injuries of varying degrees of severity, said the anti-terrorism committee.

An earlier statement by Moscow police to the Ria Novosti news agency said investigators and police forensic specialists were at the site.

Images posted on Russian Telegram channels showed fire engines and ambulances outside the building.

Russia has been the target of several terrorist attacks in the past.

Since the start of the war in Ukraine in 2022, Ukraine’s secret service has claimed or been accused of several attacks on Russian military officers and public figures backing the conflict.

Russia blamed Ukraine for the killing of a senior general, Yaroslav Moskalik, in a car bomb in April 2025.

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In August 2022 the nationalist Darya Dugina, daughter of hardline Russian ideologue Alexander Dugin, was killed outside Moscow when a bomb attached to her car detonated.

Many believe her father was the intended target.

In April 2023, pro-Kremlin military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky – real name Maxim Fomin – was killed when a statuette he was handed exploded at a café in Saint Petersburg.

A bomb attached to a scooter outside a Moscow apartment block killed General Igor Kirillov, head of the Russian army’s chemical weapons division, and his assistant in December 2024.

And the pro-Kremlin writer and nationalist Zakhar Prilepin was seriously wounded in a May 2023 car explosion that killed another person near the city of Nizhny Novgorod.

Overnight strikes

Meanwhile, a Ukrainian drone strike killed two people in southwestern Russia, the region’s governor said this morning.

The attack occurred in the southwestern region of Saratov, about 750 kilometres from the border with Ukraine, Saratov region Governor Roman Busargin wrote on Telegram.

“As a result of the enemy drone attack, two people were killed. Words of condolence to the family and loved ones,” Busargin said.

The Russian defence ministry added that its air defence systems intercepted 635 Ukrainian drones overnight.

“During the past night, air defence duty assets intercepted and destroyed 635 Ukrainian fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles,” the ministry wrote on Telegram, listing more than a dozen regions where the drones were encountered.

- © AFP 2026