May 27 (Reuters) – Russia has passed a law allowing its central bank and other financial institutions to operate their own defence systems and arm staff to repel drone attacks, a document published by the lower house of parliament showed.
Ukraine struck the central bank’s office in Sevastopol in Crimea with a missile on Wednesday, local governor Mikhail Razvozhaev said, alleging that it was a British-made Storm Shadow missile. He added that the building was on fire.
Ukraine has been regularly striking Russia with drones since Moscow launched the war in February 2022, with energy infrastructure frequently targeted as Kyiv aims to deprive Moscow of revenues in order to bring the conflict to an end.
Drone defence systems could be located next to the central bank, the country’s biggest bank Sberbank, and the Russian Cash Collection Association. Staff at those institutions would be permitted to be armed.
The institutions would handle the cost of drone defence themselves, Anatoly Aksakov, the head of the financial committee in Russia’s lower house of parliament, the State Duma, was quoted as saying by the RBC news outlet.
The attack on the central bank’s office in Sevastopol was the first on a major central bank office since the start of the war. There were no reported attacks on major Sberbank offices.
On Tuesday, Alexander Shokhin, head of Russia’s most powerful business lobby, told President Vladimir Putin companies are ready to finance the purchase of heavier weapons and electronic systems to defend their infrastructure from drone attacks.
(Reporting by Reuters, Writing by Jekaterīna Golubkova in Tokyo and Gleb Bryanski in Moscow; Editing by Lincoln Feast and Gus Trompiz)
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