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Ukrainian drone strikes force Kremlin to scale down Navy Day celebrations
Russian President Vladimir Putin, second left arrives to visit the frigate "Admiral Grigorovich" in Kronstadt, outside St. Petersburg during Navy Day celebration, Russia. AP
Russia scaled back its Navy Day celebrations on Sunday, citing security concerns amid ongoing Ukrainian drone attacks that continue to challenge the Kremlin.
Russian authorities called off the warship parades that are typically held to commemorate the annual Navy Day celebrations in St. Petersburg, the Kaliningrad region on the Baltic, and the far-eastern port of Vladivostok.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov responded to reporters' questions about why the parade in St. Petersburg was called off, even as President Vladimir Putin arrived in his hometown to tour the navy headquarters, by saying that 'it's linked to the overall situation, security reasons, which are above all else.'
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Over the course of the night, 99 Ukrainian drones were shot down by Russian air defences, according to the Russian Defence Ministry. It claimed that 51 more drones were shot down close to St. Petersburg later that day. According to local officials, a woman was injured by drone fragments in the Lomonosov area.
Due to the drone threat, the Pulkovo airport in St. Petersburg halted dozens of flights early on Sunday.
Putin paid a visit to St. Petersburg's historic Admiralty headquarters to receive reports on four-day naval manoeuvres that ended on Sunday. 150 vessels from the Baltics to the Pacific participated in the July Storm exercise.
In addition to promising to increase the navy's training and build more warships, Putin also stated that 'the navy's strike power and combat capability will rise to a qualitatively new level.'
He also visited the Admiral Grigorovich frigate of the Baltic Fleet at the Kronstadt naval base just west of St. Petersburg to hail its crew for fending off a Ukrainian drone attack in the region earlier in the day.
Reducing the scale of the Navy Day celebrations reflects Moscow's worries about Ukraine's sweeping drone attacks across the country.
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In a series of strikes earlier in the war now in its fourth year, Ukraine sank several Russian warships in the Black 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 code-named 'Spiderweb,' Ukraine used drones to hit several Russian air bases 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 land mine and another woman was injured from a drone attack on another community in the region, the regional military administration said.
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French President Emmanuel Macron had a phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Sunday and said later on X that he reaffirmed France's support for Kyiv and vowed to raise pressure on Moscow to force it to 'agree to a ceasefire that paves the way for talks leading to a solid and lasting peace, with full European involvement.'
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