Russia reserves the right to take “tough retaliatory measures”, the foreign ministry said on Monday, after it accused Ukraine of attacking Moscow and the Russian-annexed Crimean peninsula with drones.
Russia said it had neutralised two Ukrainian drones over Moscow in the early hours of Monday, with one crashing close to the defence ministry in the city centre. Officials said the drones hit non-residential buildings in the capital and that there were no casualties. The attack came one day after Kyiv vowed to “retaliate” for a Russian missile attack on the Black Sea port of Odesa. “A Kyiv regime attempt to carry out a terrorist act using two drones on objects on the territory of the city of Moscow was stopped,” Russia’s defence ministry said. “Two Ukrainian drones were suppressed and crashed. There are no casualties.”
Russian media reported a third drone crashed into a cemetery in the Moscow region.
An ammunition depot was struck during a Ukrainian drone attack on Dzhankoi in Crimea early on Monday, with Russian air defence forces intercepting or suppressing 11 drones over the area, a Russian-installed official has said.
Interfax reports train traffic in Crimea has begun moving again after a delay caused by the earlier drone attacks. The Russian Federation unilaterally annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.
Ukraine claims to have recaptured a small amount of territory in the Bakhmut region, according to the latest operational briefing by the deputy defence minister.
Tass reports that one civilian has been killed, and another injured, by Ukrainian shelling into occupied Kherson on the left-bank of the Dniepr River.
The Kremlin on Monday accused Kyiv of carrying out a “deliberate attack on journalists” in Ukraine’s south-eastern Zaporizhzhia region after a reporter for the Russian state news agency RIA was killed. The war correspondent Rostislav Zhuravlev was killed in a Ukrainian cluster munition strike, according to RIA. He died from his wounds during an evacuation.
Yevgeny Balitsky, head of the Russian-imposed administration of the occupied Zaporizhzhia region of Ukraine, has posted to Telegram to claim that Ukraine is not actively attacking across the frontline in the region, and that “their command is actively carrying out the delivery of personnel to positions, making up for losses.”
Russia attacked the Ukrainian Black Sea city of Odesa again and kept up a barrage that has damaged critical port infrastructure in southern Ukraine, Ukrainian officials said. At least one person was killed and 22 wounded in the strike early on Sunday. An overnight drone attack then destroyed a grains depot and injured four port employees. The city has come under repeated attack since Moscow last week pulled out of a deal allowing the export of Ukrainian grain.
Four children were among the wounded in the Odesa blasts, which severely damaged the historic Transfiguration Cathedral, a landmark Orthodox cathedral in the city, said Odesa’s regional governor, Oleh Kiper. The cathedral’s archdeacon, Andrii Palchuk, rued the “enormous” destruction of the church, which he said was caused by a direct hit from a Russian missile.
US secretary of state Antony Blinken has said that while Ukraine has recaptured about half the territory that Russia initially seized in its invasion, Kyiv faces “a very hard fight” to win back more.
Russia’s industry minister, Denis Manturov, said on Monday that the defence industry was producing more munitions a month than it did in the whole of 2022.
Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, said Ukraine’s counteroffensive “has failed” as he hosted Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko, his close ally, for talks in St Petersburg. “There is no counteroffensive,” Russian news agencies quoted Lukashenko as saying on Sunday, to which Putin replied: “It exists, but it has failed.” Ukraine began its long-anticipated counteroffensive last month but has so far made only small gains.
Lukashenko claimed Minsk was “controlling” the situation with fighters from the Wagner mercenary group and restricting them to staying in the centre of the country. Belarus is hosting Wagner fighters on its territory after brokering a deal after Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin ended a short-lived uprising last month in exchange for safe passage to exile in Belarus.
Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, has said Kyiv and Warsaw will “always stand united” after Vladimir Putin and Alexander Lukashenko accused Poland of having territorial ambitions. “Putin’s attempts to drive a wedge between Kyiv and Warsaw are as futile as his failing invasion of Ukraine,” Kuleba wrote on Twitter on Sunday. “Unlike Russia, Poland and Ukraine have learned from history and will always stand united against Russian imperialism and disrespect for international law.”
Ukraine alleged Russia shelled a cultural centre in the Donetsk region with cluster munitions on Sunday morning. The defence ministry said the centre in Chasiv Yar housed the “humanitarian headquarters” and was used as an aid distribution point for civilians.
A meeting of a new Nato-Ukraine Council, expected to address Black Sea security, has been scheduled for Wednesday, president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Sunday. Nato spokesperson Oanu Lungescu said earlier that the previously announced meeting, requested by Zelenskiy in a phone conversation with Nato chief Jens Stoltenberg, would discuss the situation following Russia’s withdrawal from the year-old deal over Ukrainian grain exports.
