Kremlin acknowledges strain in Russia-Azerbaijan relations
Tensions between Moscow and Baku have escalated in recent months following the detention of several ethnic Azerbaijanis in Russia and the death of two of them in police custody.
On Saturday Ilham Aliyev, the president of Azerbaijan, said he wanted Russia to publicly acknowledge that it had accidentally shot down an Azerbaijani passenger plane in December last year, killing 38 people on board, and to punish those responsible.
President Vladimir Putin apologised at the time to Aliyev for what the Kremlin called a "tragic incident" over Russia in which an Azerbaijan Airlines plane crashed after Russian air defences opened fire against Ukrainian drones. But Putin stopped short of saying Russia had shot down the aircraft.
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The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Ukraine war briefing: Drones hit Russian electronic warfare plant and disrupt railway and air travel
Ukraine's drone forces were on the attack against Russian strategic targets on Saturday and into Sunday. Drones hit the Signal radio and electronic warfare equipment plant in the Stavropol region, an official from Ukraine's SBU security service told Reuters. Two facilities at the Signal plant in the city of Stavropol, about 540km (335 miles) from the Ukrainian border, were damaged. Videos online showed an explosion and a large column of dark smoke rising into the sky. The plant was one of Russia's leading producers of electronic warfare equipment, including radar, radio navigation equipment, and remote control radio equipment, the official said. 'Each such attack stops production processes and reduces the enemy's military potential. This work will continue.' Russia's civil aviation authority said it again had to shut down an airport as Ukrainian drones attacked. Rosaviatsia said it suspended flights soon after midnight on Sunday at the airport serving the city of Volgograd, which is the administrative centre of the broader Volgograd region. Ukrainian drones also hit a railway power supply in the Volgograd region, the administration of the region in Russia's south said on Sunday. Air raid alerts were introduced in several other regions in Russia's west and south, warning of Ukrainian drone attacks, according to posts by regional officials. Drones again targeted Moscow, said the mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, and an industrial facility in the Penza oblast south-east of the capital, according to the region's governor, Oleg Melnichenko. In the Rostov region, officials said Ukrainian drones killed two people. Ukraine's regions of Dnipro in the south and Sumy in the north-east came under combined rocket and drone attack into Saturday, local officials reported. The head of the Dnipro regional administration, Serhii Lysak, said at least two people died and five were wounded. In the city of Dnipro, a multi-storey building and business were damaged and outside the city a fire engulfed a shopping centre. In Sumy, the military administration said three people were injured. Russian drones hit a central square in Sumy city, and damaged the building of the regional administration. Kharkiv sustained an intense aerial bombardment with Ukraine's state emergency service reporting six people were hurt, including four rescuers wounded in a 'double tap' where a second attack targeted emergency workers trying to help the victims of the first. According to Ukraine's air force, Russia launched 208 drones and 27 missiles overnight into Saturday. It said according to preliminary data, air defences and electronic warfare took down or intercepted 183 drones and 17 missiles, but hits from 10 missiles and 25 drones were recorded in nine locations. Russia's defence ministry claimed its forces had captured two more villages in eastern Ukraine: Zelenyi Hai in the Donetsk region and Maliivka just inside the Dnipropetrovsk region. The Ukrainian military's general staff mentioned Zelenyi Hai as one of several frontline areas that had come under Russian attack 11 times over the past 24 hours. It said Maliivka was one of several villages where 10 Russian attacks had been halted. Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president, said Ukraine's top commander, Oleksandr Syrskyi, had identified Pokrovsk as an area requiring 'special attention' due to constant attack. A military spokesperson, Viktor Trehubov, told national television that Russian forces were attacking Pokrovsk in 'a small torrent … that simply does not stop'. Zelenskyy said Ukrainian forces had recorded 'successful actions' in Sumy. The Reuters news agency, which reported on the developments, could not independently confirm battlefield accounts from either side. Russia's defence ministry on Saturday claimed that it struck military facilities in Ukraine that 'manufacture components for missile weapons, as well as produce ammunition and explosives'. The claim could not be independently verified. Zelenskyy posted that that 'there can be absolutely no silence in response to such strikes, and Ukrainian long-range drones ensure this. Russian military enterprises, Russian logistics, Russian airports must feel that the Russian war has real consequences for them.' An Indian firm that shipped $1.4m worth of an explosive compound with military uses to Russia said on Saturday that it complies with Indian rules and the substance was for civilian industrial purposes. A Reuters investigation found that HMX, also called octogen, was sent to two Russian explosives manufacturers despite the threat of international sanctions. Ukraine's drones have attacked the factory of one of the Russian companies after security services linked it to Russia's military. The Indian company involved emailed Reuters saying its shipment was 'for industrial activity and it's a civil explosive'. The US government has identified HMX as 'critical for Russia's war effort'. It is widely used in missile and torpedo warheads, rocket motors, exploding projectiles and plastic-bonded explosives for advanced military systems, according to the Pentagon's Defense Technical Information Center and related defense research programmes. The compound also has some limited civilian applications in mining and other industrial activities.
Reuters
2 hours ago
- Reuters
Ukrainian drones target St Petersburg as Putin attends scaled-down Navy Day
MOSCOW, July 27 (Reuters) - Ukrainian drones targeted St. Petersburg on Sunday, Russian authorities said, forcing the airport to close for five hours as Vladimir Putin marked Russia's Navy Day in the city, despite the earlier cancellation of its naval parade due to security concerns. St. Petersburg usually holds a large-scale, televised navy parade on Navy Day, which features a flotilla of warships and military vessels sailing down the Neva River and is attended by Putin. Last year, Russia suspected a Ukrainian plan to attack the city's parade, according to state television. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed on Sunday that this year's parade had been cancelled for security reasons, following first reports of its cancellation in early July. Putin arrived at the city's historic naval headquarters on Sunday by patrol speed boat, from where he followed drills involving more than 150 vessels and 15,000 military personnel in the Pacific and Arctic Oceans and Baltic and Caspian Seas. "Today we are marking this holiday in a working setting, we are inspecting the combat readiness of the fleet," Putin said in a video address. The Russian Defence Ministry said air defence units downed a total of 291 Ukrainian fixed-wing drones on Sunday, below a record 524 drones downed in attacks on May 7, ahead of Russia's Victory Day parade on May 9. Alexander Drozdenko, governor of the Leningrad region surrounding St. Petersburg, said that over ten drones were downed over the area, and falling debris injured a woman. At 0840 GMT on Sunday Drozdenko said that the attack was repelled. St. Petersburg's Pulkovo airport was closed during the attack, with 57 flights delayed and 22 diverted to other airports, according to a statement. Pulkovo resumed operations later on Sunday. Russian blogger Alexander Yunashev, part of an official group of reporters travelling with Peskov, said Peskov had told him their flight from Moscow to St. Petersburg had been delayed by the drone attack for 2 hours on Sunday.
The Independent
4 hours ago
- The Independent
Russia scales down celebrations honoring its navy as Ukraine launches more drone attacks
Russia on Sunday scaled down the festivities honoring its navy citing security concerns as continuing Ukrainian drone attacks posed a challenge to the Kremlin. Russian authorities canceled the parades of warships in St. Petersburg, in the Kaliningrad region on the Baltic and in the far-eastern port of Vladivostok that are usually held to mark the annual Navy Day celebrations. Asked about the reason for the cancellation of the parade in St. Petersburg even as President Vladimir Putin arrived in his home city to visit the navy headquarters, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that "it's linked to the overall situation, security reasons, which are above all else.' The Russian Defense Ministry said that air defenses downed 99 Ukrainian drones over several regions overnight. Later in the day, officials reported more drones shot down near St. Petersburg. A woman was injured by drone fragments in the Lomonosov region, according to the local authorities. St. Petersburg's Pulkovo airport suspended dozens of flights early Sunday because of the drone threat. On a trip to St. Petersburg, Putin visited the historic Admiralty building to receive reports on four-day naval maneuvers that wrapped up Sunday. The July Storm exercise involved 150 warships from the Baltics to the Pacific. Putin vowed to build more warships and intensify the navy's training, adding that 'the navy's strike power and combat capability will rise to a qualitatively new level.' Reducing the scale of the Navy Day celebrations reflects Moscow's worries about Ukraine 's sweeping drone attacks across the country. In a series of strikes earlier in the war now in its fourth year, Ukraine sank several Russian warships in the Blacks Sea, crippling Moscow's naval capability and forcing it to redeploy its fleet from Russia-occupied Crimea to Novorossiysk. And in an audacious June 1 attack codenamed 'Spiderweb,' Ukraine used drones to hit several Russian airbases hosting long-range bombers across Russia, from the Arctic Kola Peninsula to Siberia. The drones were launched from trucks covertly placed near the bases, taking the Russian military by surprise in a humiliating blow to the Kremlin. The raid destroyed or damaged many of the bombers that had been used by Moscow to launch aerial attacks on Ukraine, providing a major morale boost for Kyiv at a time when Kyiv's undermanned and under-gunned forces are facing Russian attacks along the 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front line. Russia continued to batter Ukraine with drone and missile strikes Sunday. In Sumy in Ukraine's northeast, a drone attack damaged civil infrastructure objects, an administrative building and non-residential premises, leaving three people wounded. Elsewhere in the region, two men died after being blown up by a landmine and another woman was injured from a drone attack on another community in the region, the regional military administration said. ___
