Russia Tones Down Naval Celebrations As Drones Fly Near Putin's Hometown
Russia held subdued ceremonies honoring its navy on July 27 in St. Petersburg, citing security concerns, and authorities in the surrounding region reported that air defense forces shot down several drones they said were fired by Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Russia kept up its assault on Ukraine, where officials said the military shot down 78 of the 83 attack drones or decoys fired overnight and into the morning, including several whose fragments damaged buildings in the Poltava region, which lies between Kyiv and the front lines in the east.
Russian President Vladimir Putin revived a Navy Day parade of ships on the Neva River in his hometown of St. Petersburg in 2017, part of continuing efforts to celebrate the military and whip up patriotic sentiment.
But the naval parade was canceled this year, a decision announced by local authorities late last week. On July 27, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that 'it's linked to the overall situation, security reasons, which are above all else.'
Russian officials said more than 10 drones were shot down in the morning in the Leningrad region, which surrounds St. Petersburg, and the governor said one woman was slightly injured by falling debris. Dozens of flights were suspended at St. Petersburg's Pulkovo airport.
Almost 100 drones were shot down in various Russian regions overnight, the Russian Defense Ministry said.
Putin was in St. Petersburg and received reports on a four-day naval exercise that ended on July 27 and involved vessels from the Baltic Sea, off St. Petersburg, to the Pacific. He pledged to build more warships and step up naval training, saying that 'the navy's strike power and combat capability will rise to a qualitatively new level.'
Since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Kyiv's forces have sunk or damaged several Russian naval vessels in the Black Sea, hampering its operations there and chasing it from the Russian-occupied Crimean Peninsula to a base in Russia, Novorossiisk.
While nothing like the large, unrelenting air strikes that Russia has been unleashing on Ukrainian cities nationwide and stepped up in recent months, Kyiv has harried Russia with drone attacks.
In a social media post on July 26, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russian strikes on cities, towns, and infrastructure 'certainly cannot be left without response, and Ukrainian long-range drones ensure one. 'Russian military enterprises, Russian logistics, and Russian airfields must see that Russia's own war is now hitting them back with real consequences,' he wrote. 'The precision of our drones, the daily nature of Ukraine's responses — are some of the arguments that will surely bring peace closer.'
Russian and Ukrainian negotiators made no visible progress toward peace at a brief third round of direct negotiations in Istanbul on July 23. Russia has rejected calls by the United States, European countries, and Ukraine for a cease-fire, and Kyiv and Moscow remain miles apart on key issues such as territory and security.
Among other things, Russia says Ukraine must cede four mainland regions that it baselessly claims are now Russian, including the portions that its forces do not hold, and accept strict limits on the size of its armed forces and foreign military support.US President Donald Trump, who has been seeking to broker a peace deal since he took office in January, threatened on July 14 to impose new sanctions on Moscow – and secondary sanctions punishing countries that buy Russian petroleum products — if Russia and Ukraine do not reach a deal by early September.In an interview with Fox News broadcast on July 26, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that Trump is becoming 'increasingly frustrated' that despite having good interactions with Putin during phone calls, 'it never leads anywhere.'
Trump is 'losing his patience. He's losing his willingness to continue to wait for the Russian side to do something here, to bring an end to this war,' Rubio said, adding that there was 'no way that Putin could have sustained this war without Chinese support, particularly buying his oil.'
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