Ukraine has launched drones at Moscow for the second night in a row, forcing closure of the capital’s three major airports, Russian officials said early on Wednesday. The mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, said six Ukrainian drones approached Moscow and what he claimed was debris from an intercepted dronefell over one of the key highwaysleading into the city. Russia’s aviation authority, Rosaviatsia, said ithalted flights at airports serving Moscowincluding Vnukovo, Domodedovo and Zhukovsky.
Ukrainian forces attacked a power substation at the town of Rylsk in Russia’s western Kursk region, the regional governor said early on Tuesday, after Russian war bloggers reportedUkrainian forces firing missiles had smashed through the border in Kursk, crossing minefields with armoured vehicles. The Kursk governor, Alexander Khinshtein, said two people were injured in the substation attack, while two transformers were damaged and power cut.
The Russian military blog Rybar saidUkrainian units were trying to advance in Kursk near the settlements of Tyotkino and Glushkovo. The Ukrainian military said its forces had struck a Russian drone command unit near Tyotkino on Sunday. Russia said Ukrainian attacks on its border area near the Sumy region killed three people. Ukrainianprosecutors said on Monday that Russian forces had subjected two settlements in the Sumy region bordering Kursk – Bilopillya and Vorozhba – to artillery fire and guided bomb attacks,killing three residents and injuring four. Local officials ordered evacuations in part of Sumy across from the fighting in Kursk.
TheUkrainian commander-in-chief, Gen Oleksandr Syrsky,said on Monday that the Kursk offensive had “achieved most of its goals”, showing Ukraine’s military capabilities and preventing Russia from launching offensives elsewhere on the frontline. In recent weeks, Russia claimed to have quashed Ukraine’s Kursk incursion, but Ukraine’s president,Volodymyr Zelenskyy, saysKyiv’s forces continue to operate thereand in the adjacent Russian region of Belgorod.
A Czech-led ammunition initiative hassupplied Ukraine with half a million large-calibre rounds already since the start of the year, the Czech Republic’s prime minister, Petr Fiala, said on Monday after meeting Zelenskyy in Prague.
ARussian reporter critical of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine has fled to Franceand told how Reporters Without Borders helped coordinate her escape. Speaking in an interview with Agence France-Presse in Paris,Ekaterina Barabash, 64, said: “Russian prison, it’s not a life. It is worse than death.”Barabash was arrested in February on allegations of spreading “false information” about the Russian armed forces in several posts she made on social media. She fled house arrest in April and made a “very difficult” journey to France taking about two and a half weeks. She removed her electronic bracelet when she fled house arrest – “it’s somewhere in the Russian forest.”