Kyiv reportedly launched drone and missile attacks against Russian regions. Russian air defense stopped them, according to Moscow.
Russia says it has shot down Ukrainian drones in four of its regions, including around the capital Moscow, as well as two Ukrainian missiles over the Sea of Azov, the day after a large drone attack on the city of Kiev .
The drone attacks targeted Russian regions bordering Ukraine and around Moscow, Russian authorities said.
“Air defense destroyed four Ukrainian drones over the Bryansk, Smolensk and Tula regions”said the Russian Ministry of Defense in a press release.
Earlier on Sunday, Russia assured that Ukrainian drones had also been shot down over the Moscow region and said it had shot down two Ukrainian missiles heading towards its territory over the Sea of Azov.
“Russian air defense located and destroyed two Ukrainian missiles over the Azov Sea area”according to a press release from the Russian Defense Ministry.
For its part, Ukraine claimed to have shot down eight of the nine drones launched against its territory on Sunday.
These offensives come the day after a vast drone attack launched by Moscow against the Ukrainian capital, presented by kyiv as the most important since the start of the conflict in February 2022.
According to Ukraine, Moscow launched 75 attack drones on Saturday, mainly towards the capital kyiv, of which 71 were shot down by Ukrainian forces.
This attack left five people injured, according to the results communicated on Saturday by the authorities, and deprived dozens of apartment buildings and buildings of electricity.
As winter approaches, Kiev is preparing for a new campaign of massive Russian bombings targeting its energy infrastructure and fears a situation similar to that of winter 2022 when millions of people were deprived of power in the midst of a wave of cold.
“Rebellion”
The drone attack on Saturday also took place on the day of commemoration in Ukraine of the Holodomor, the great famine of the 1930s which caused the death of millions of Ukrainians, a “genocide” orchestrated according to Kiev by Joseph Stalin.
In a message commemorating the Holodomor, US President Joe Biden assured Saturday that “Ukraine’s agricultural infrastructure is once again being deliberately targeted” by Moscow, which he accused of “deliberately” damaging fields and agricultural infrastructure.
Russia, for its part, emphasizes that the famine of the 1930s caused victims not only of Ukrainians, but also of Russians, Kazakhs and other nationalities, in a context of land collectivization.
These offensives also come at a time when Ukraine is celebrating the tenth anniversary of the pro-Western Maidan revolution, which aroused the anger of its Russian neighbor.
Shortly after the Ukrainian overthrow of the Moscow-backed regime in 2014, Russia annexed Crimea and supported separatists in eastern Ukraine.
Ten years later, Russia continues to judge the Maidan revolution as an illegitimate “coup d’état” and aims to install a new government in kyiv.
“In Kiev, ten years ago, there was a coup by force and the legitimate authorities were overthrown,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Sunday.
Additional sources • AFP