The Victory Day parade was canceled after the drone was spotted about 30 kilometers (19 miles) east of the capital, a regional official said.
A “Ukrainian” drone was spotted outside Moscow, an official said, adding that the discovery forced local authorities to cancel the Victory Day parade for security reasons.
Moscow has accused Ukraine of being behind repeated drone strikes on military infrastructure inside Russia.
Igor Sukhin, head of the Bogorodsky district outside the capital Moscow, said on Monday that a local resident spotted a Ukrainian drone in the forest.
“This is not the first drone to appear in the Moscow region,” Suxin said on the messaging app Telegram.
He added that a similar drone was spotted in February in the town of Kolomna, about 100 kilometers (about 60 miles) southeast of Moscow.
Russian news reports said Monday that the drone was spotted about 30 kilometers (about 19 miles) east of the Russian capital.
The incident once again underscored Ukraine’s ability to penetrate deep into Russia’s heartland, as the Ukrainian military is believed to be preparing for a spring counteroffensive to retake occupied territories.
Sukhin said the Victory Day parade scheduled for May 9 in his community and a concert associated with the celebration had been cancelled.
He added: “Everyone understands that safety is always going to come up and always come first.”
Earlier, authorities in several border regions, including Belgorod, said they would also abandon the Victory Day parades.
However, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday that Russian authorities were preparing for the annual show of military power on Moscow’s Red Square to celebrate the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany in 1945.
“It’s going to be a very important event,” he said.
Separately, Russian forces “repelled” a drone attack on the Moscow-annexed Crimean port of Sevastopol, authorities said on Monday.
The Moscow-appointed head of Sevastopol, Mikhail Razvozhayev, said the military destroyed a Ukrainian maritime drone that tried to attack the port in the early hours of the morning , and the other exploded.
The powerful blast shattered windows in several apartment buildings but did not cause any other damage, he said.
The attack was the latest in a series of attempted attacks on Sevastopol. Ukrainian authorities had no immediate comment on Monday’s attack.
