Russia-Ukraine war: Drones shot down above Moscow after Kyiv aerial assault – live

Ukrainian drones targeted four Russian regions, the country’s defence ministry said on Sunday.

It comes after Ukraine capital Kyiv faced Vladimir Putin’s biggest drone attack in the early hours of Saturday.

The drones targeted four regions: Moscow, Tula, Kaluga and Bryansk. At least 20 drones were intercepted in the Russian capital, said Moscow’s officials.

One person was left injured in Tula after an intercepted drone hit an apartment building, said the region’s governor Alexei Dyumin.

Flights were delayed or cancelled at Moscow’s main airports due to the attacks, reported the Kommersant newspaper.

One person was injured in Tula when an intercepted drone hit an apartment building, the region’s governor Alexei Dyumin said.

The shelves at Moscow supermarkets are full of fruit and vegetables, cheese and meat. But many of the shoppers look at the selection with dismay as inflation makes their wallets feel empty.

Russia’s Central Bank has raised its key lending rate four times this year to try to get inflation under control and stabilize the ruble’s exchange rate as the economy weathers the effects of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine and the Western sanctions imposed as a consequence.

One of the men, Denis Gorin, was recruited into a private military company after signing a contract with the Russian ministry of defence but is known to have been convicted thrice for murdering at least four people between 2003 and 2022.

He was also convicted of eating the remains of his victims along with his brother, reported Sibir Realii, a news outlet aligned with Radio Free Europe.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has announced a plan to endorse a national strategy for the development of artificial intelligence, claiming it’s essential to prevent a western ‘monopoly’.

Speaking at an AI conference in Moscow on Friday, Putin noted that “it’s imperative to use Russian solutions in the field of creating reliable and transparent artificial intelligence systems that are also safe for humans.”

“Monopolistic dominance of such foreign technology in Russia is unacceptable, dangerous and inadmissible,” Putin said.

He noted that “many modern systems, trained on western data are intended for the western market” and “reflect that part of western ethics, norms of behavior, public policy to which we object.”

During his more than two decades in power, Putin has overseen a multi-pronged crackdown on the opposition and civil society groups, and promoted “traditional values” to counter purported western influence — policies that have become even more oppressive after he sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022.

A Ukrainian soldier posthumously awarded a medal after a widely shared video showed him declaring “Glory to Ukraine“ before apparently being shot dead, has been commemorated with a statue in his hometown.

The video shared in March showed a man the military later named as Oleksandr Matsievskiy, a sniper with a unit from the region of Chernihiv, saying “Slava Ukraini,” a phrase more than a century old that has become a popular expression of resistance to Russia’s February 2022 invasion.

Standing smoking a cigarette in a wooded area, carrying no visible weaponry, Matsievskiy is then seen slumping to the ground, apparently struck repeatedly by unseen shooters.

Kyiv blamed “brutal and brazen” Russians for his death, as did his mother Paraska Demchuk, 68.

“He would have taken all of them with him if he had a grenade,” she said, as she proudly showed the medal President Volodymyr Zelenskiy bestowed on her son representing the “Hero of Ukraine“ honour.

“He would say to me, ‘Mum, I will never let them capture me’,” she said through tears. “He wouldn’t just bandy words about. It was on the inside, it was like a core inside him,” she said.

Kyiv has opened a criminal investigation into the death of Matsievskiy, who was quickly talked of as a hero on social media, where many supporters posted the words “Heroyam Slava,” or “Glory to the Heroes,” the traditional response to Slava Ukraini.

The attack on Kyiv was carried out on the morning of Holodomor Memorial Day, which commemorates the manmade famine in Soviet Ukraine that killed millions of Ukrainians from 1932 to 1933. It is marked on the fourth Saturday in November.

Speaking at the Grain from Ukraine summit on Saturday, which saw leaders and parliamentary representatives from Belgium, Ireland, Finland, the Czech Republic, Poland and Estonia meet with Zelenskyy in Kyiv to discuss global food security, the Ukrainian president warned that “if (Russian President Vladimir) Putin could arrange another Holodomor for Ukraine, he would do it.

Besides Kyiv, the Sumy, Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhzhia, Mykolaiv and Kirovohrad regions were also targeted.

Meanwhile, shelling killed one person and wounded three in the southern Kherson region, regional Gov. Oleksandr Prokudin said Saturday. According to Prokudin, the region had been shelled 100 times over the previous 24 hours.

At least five civilians were wounded in the hourslong assault on Kyiv, which saw several buildings damaged by falling debris from downed drones, including a kindergarten.

The wounded included an 11-year-old child, according to Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko. In the city’s Solomiansky district, debris left a crater in the courtyard of a residential area, and the windows of a nearby building were blown out.

Residents, most of them elderly, received medical attention at the scene. Others took shelter in a nearby subway station.

As people were clearing up debris and broken glass in the neighborhood, the hum of a fresh wave of drones could be heard nearby.

The assault on Kyiv began at 4 a.m. local time, continuing in waves for more than six hours, and caused power outages in 77 residential buildings and 120 institutions, according to Popko.

Ukraine‘s Energy Ministry said 17,000 people were without power in the Kyiv region as a result of the attack, noting that four power lines were damaged. Power was restored in the early afternoon.

“Our soldiers shot down most of the drones. Unfortunately, not all,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on Telegram. “But we continue to work to strengthen our air defense and shoot down more.”

Russia on Saturday morning launched its most intense drone attack on Ukraine since the beginning of its full-scale invasion in 2022, targeting the Ukrainian capital, military officials said.

In total, Russia launched 75 Iranian-made Shahed drones against Ukraine, of which 74 were destroyed by air defenses, Ukraine‘s air force said.

“Kyiv was the main target,” Ukrainian Air Force Commander Mykola Oleshchuk wrote on his Telegram channel.

The attack was “the most massive air attack by drones on Kyiv,” said Serhii Popko, head of the Kyiv city administration.

Ukrainian air force spokesman Yurii Ihnat confirmed later that the air defenses shot down 66 air targets over the capital and surrounding region throughout the morning.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen pledged support in a letter to Zelensky that she shared on X, saying the Commission would make available 50 million euros for “quick repairs and upgrades of infrastructure in Ukraine‘s ports.”

The Ukrainian president said Kyiv hoped to solve its air defence shortage through new supplies from partners and increasing its own production capacity, something on which he said there had been progress.

“As of today, I can’t say details what we are making and where, but there is progress,” he said.

Ukraine, a major exporter of grain, has been exporting grain via unilateral corridors through the Black sea, after Russia withdrew in July from a UN-brokered deal to allow grain ships through its blockade.

Ukraine‘s current Black sea grain export corridors all start from ports in Ukraine‘s southern region of Odesa.

“There are certain air defence systems… we are asking for them,” Zelensky said. “We’ve already got an answer when those systems will start to guard that region. Because there, both the corridor and the people are important.”

Asked about the protests by Polish and Slovak truckers which have blocked much of Ukraine‘s road-based cargo supply in recent days, Zelensky blamed the problem on the internal politics of those countries.

“I believe that there are difficulties on the border first and foremost because of certain political steps by our neighbours,” he told a press conference after the summit.

Zelensky said he was confident the issue would be solved if Ukraine‘s neighbours were given “a bit of time” to deal with the dispute.