Moscow claimed this Sunday, August 20 to have foiled a Ukrainian drone attack targeting Moscow and its region, the second in two days. “There were no casualties or damage,” the defense ministry said in a statement. The drone was flying “in the direction of Moscow”, assured the Russian army, specifying that the machine “crashed in an uninhabited area”. Flights to Vnukovo and Domodedovo international airports had been “temporarily restricted” overnight, the Russian transport agency Rosaviatsia said, quoted by the Ria Novosti news agency, before a rapid return “to the normal”.
The Moscow region is not the only one to have been targeted overnight by drones. According to the governor of the Kursk region, Roman Starovoit, a drone “crashed on the roof of the station, after which a fire broke out”. According to the head of this region located on the border with Ukraine, 50 people were on the scene at the time of the attack, five were injured. Further south, in the Rostov region, “two drones” were intercepted by Russian anti-aircraft defense, regional governor Vasily Golubev announced. This type of assault on Russian soil is on the rise as part of the counter-offensive by kyiv forces. On Saturday, a Russian attack on the Ukrainian city of Cherniguiv left seven dead and at least 140 injured.
The day after the attack, Cherniguiv assesses the damage
Relief continues to work on Sunday in the rubble of the center of Cherniguiv, in northern Ukraine, hit by a Russian missile that killed at least seven people. “At the moment, the work to clear the city center continues, construction machinery is at work. All the surrounding buildings are inspected to estimate the extent of the damage”, wrote this Sunday morning on Telegram the governor of the Cherniguiv region, Vyacheslav Chaus.
In addition to seven deaths, 148 people were injured, 41 of whom are still hospitalized on Sunday, the governor said. The previous evening, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had put the number of injured at 144. “An ordinary Saturday, which Russia turned into a day of pain and loss,” he said, adding that the attack took place on the day of the Transfiguration of the Lord, an important Orthodox holiday. The bombardment took the population by surprise, in a city spared in recent months from large-scale attacks after being briefly surrounded by Russian forces at the start of the invasion in February 2022.
The UN “responded by denouncing the attack. It is heinous to attack the main square of a big city, in the morning, when people are walking, some going to church”, lambasted in a communicated the humanitarian coordinator of the UN in Ukraine, Denise Brown. “It has to stop”. “In international law, intentionally targeting civilian targets constitutes a war crime. This is a new illustration of Russia’s cowardice and cynicism”, also reacted French diplomacy.
The corrugated sheets of the roof of the theater, through which the missile penetrated, are twisted and jagged and their debris litter the surrounding ground, according to an AFP team on the spot. All the window panes exploded, like those of the shops near its entrance, at the corner of the square. Against the wall of a nearby restaurant, a car thrown four meters by the blast of the explosion exposes its twisted engine in the front, with deflated bloody airbags in its two front seats. On the floor, pools of blood at the bottom of two doors. Unesco denounced the fact that the historic center of the city, and in particular the theater, was targeted.
Putin reviews his troops in Ukraine
Russian President Vladimir Putin visited the commander of Russia’s operation in Ukraine and other senior military officials in the city of Rostov-on-Don on Saturday, Reuters reports. According to the Kremlin, Putin listened to reports from Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the army’s General Staff in charge of Moscow’s operations in Ukraine, and other high-ranking military commanders and officers, reports the Guardian.
The statement did not give further details about the encounter, and the time it took place is not specified. Videos released by state news agency RIA show Valery Gerasimov welcoming Vladimir Putin in what appears to be night and leading him inside a building after a brief handshake. This meeting comes after Ukraine claimed a counter-offensive on the southeastern front, claiming to have liberated the small village of Urozhaine in the Donetsk region.