Moscow City: how was the first working day in the business center after the arrival of drones

Julia Suntsova

Federal television channels have told practically nothing and have not shown the Russians about Sunday's UAV attacks on two towers of the main business center of the country.

Popular bloggers were also silent, while many of them live or lived in apartments in Moscow City.

The atmosphere on the spot is also sustained in the key of serenity…

On the IQ-quarter tower, high-rise repairmen work on cranes. Broken windows are tightened with plywood matched exactly to the tone. Fire trucks of the Ministry of Emergency Situations are lazily on duty below.

Equally peacefully, road workers repair the dismantled sidewalk at the foot of the tower.

On this side, the high-rise is fenced with a red-and-white signal tape, but all passers-by ignore it, crawling into the thick of things. And there is not a single «cosmonaut» who would like to interrupt the excessive curiosity of onlookers with cameras.

Office life seems to have completely frozen. The entrance to the entrance is blocked by a cordon, the turntables are stopped. Behind the glass, a security guard in a business suit yawns.

The second OKO-II tower, which, unlike the IQ quarter, is located deep in the courtyards, is a little busier.

A migrant worker vacuums up the remains of broken glass from sidewalks and lawns.

In broken Russian, he enters into dialogues with curious citizens — it happens that he also gestures to show what came from where.

Unusual events are given only by a cracked address plate on the building and tightened windows. But a person who is specially ignorant and will not understand that there is something wrong with these windows, even with entire floors — how well the masking repair is done.

There are emergency gazelles with inventory all over the business district. But if you don't know about Sunday's event, it seems that the repairmen are sprinkling over something very ordinary, as usual in all the courtyards of the capital.

A huge bus of the Moscow Government is parked on one side of the OKO towers — employees of departments seem to be delivered to the office on it.

The anomalous zone is most of all, perhaps, given out by terrible failures in the work of all navigators. You can search for the right address in this Moscow quarter on the navigator for hours! Navigation jumps, confuses, refers to the wrong addresses. Although the route between the most distant towers from each other is unlikely to exceed 10 minutes on foot.

Otherwise, nothing seems to remind of the arrival of drones.

People in vests from the traffic police at the end of the month went hunting — taking pictures of motorists who stopped in the wrong place.

The inhabitants of the towers in pantsuits go out to smoke on the porch.

Someone is having lunch with a phone by their ear right in the restaurants of the towers that the drones crashed into. The establishments are open as if nothing had happened. Afimall shopping center and grocery stores are also open.

Some business men and women are rushing somewhere with glasses of coffee in their hands, drinking on the go.

Couples in love also find a place for themselves here.

The nearest metro stations to the arrival points are the International and The exhibition area is unusually deserted.

There are no reinforced police squads at the International One, there is no one at all. There are no attendants even on the inspection tapes and at the metal detectors.

Right at the exit from the metro station, agents of the Panorama 360 observation deck (on the 89th floor of the Federation Tower) invite guests and residents of the capital to visit them.

The police, by the way, and some of its representatives in the quarter are not noticed at all.

Meanwhile, a day ago everything was not so serene here.

If you believe the telegram channels, after the UAVs flew into the Oko-II and IQ-quarter towers on the night of July 30, the inhabitants hastily packed their suitcases and left to sit out in safer country houses — they are not going to return now.

According to the data of the Moscow City Unified Information Center, the offices of seven federal ministries and departments are located in the business center (data for May 2023): the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Economy, the Ministry of Industry and Trade, the Ministry of Communications, Rosturizm, Rosstandart and Rosimushchestvo, as well as their relevant departments. All of them were located in the 42-storey tower «IQ-quarter» (42 floors). In the neighboring OKO tower, various city departments, including the Department of Transport and the Department of Property, also occupy more than 20 floors.

It was into these towers that the drones flew.

The first official to break the silence was the Mayor of the capital, Sergei Sobyanin, confirming the night attack. «Facades on two office towers of the City were slightly damaged. There are no casualties, » he said, adding that the supporting structures of the buildings were not damaged.

However, on Monday, the employees of the Ministry of Finance were offered to go to the remote location for the duration of the restoration work. The drones landed on the 10th and 11th floors of a building in the IQ quarter of Moscow City — that's where the department's offices are located. Maksut Shadaev allegedly called on employees to persevere and said that they have the opportunity to show an example of endurance and determination to «usually anxious IT specialists.» «From now on, you can go to the remote at will, only managers and those who are needed locally come to the office. It is planned to return to normal operation in a week, » Mash writes with reference to a closed intradepartmental chat.