US politicians express support for Ukraine incursion
The cross-border operation is the biggest attack on sovereign Russian territory since the war started.
Russian defenses shot down dozens of armed drones, including several in the Moscow region, in one of the biggest assaults on Russian territory since the war began, Russian authorities said Wednesday.
Some of the drones were shot down over Podolsk, a city of more than 300,000 people about 20 miles south of the Kremlin, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said.
“This is one of the largest attempts to attack Moscow using drones ever,” Sobyanin said in a social media post Wednesday. “The layered defense of Moscow that was created made it possible to successfully repel all the attacks.”
The assault comes four days after a drone attack Sunday in the Russian border region of Rostov ignited a massive fire at a fuel depot that was still raging Wednesday.
The Defense Ministry said it destroyed 45 drones over Russian territory early Wednesday, including 11 over the Moscow region. The rest were shot down over the border regions of Bryansk, Belgorod, Kaluga and Kursk.
Belgorod has been a frequent target of Ukrainian shelling, and Kyiv forces seized almost 500 square miles in Kursk and took hundreds of Russian soldiers prisoner in an incursion two weeks ago.
Developments:
∎ Russian authorities closed airports and restricted airspace in the northwestern province of Murmansk, Russia’s state-run TASS news agency reported. Murmansk Gov. Andrey Chibis said a drone threat had been detected.
∎ The Kremlin is using propaganda to prepare Russians for a new normal that will include seizure of some border territory, the independent Russian website Meduza reported. The government wants Russians to realize that areas of Kursk seized by Ukraine may not be taken back soon, according to Meduza, which publishes in Latvia.
Ukraine incursion: Zelenskyy says Ukraine creating ‘buffer zone’ in Russia to prevent attacks
Ukraine’s offensive in Russia’s Kursk Region has eliminated any chance of negotiations with the current government in Kyiv, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Wednesday. She dismissed President Volodmyr Zelenskyy’s apparent aims of creating a buffer zone to make it more difficult for the Russian military to attack and rejected claims the incursion would strengthen Kyiv’s negotiating positions.
The stunning incursion two weeks ago drew praise from some U.S. senators who called for stepping up military aid to Ukraine, which has lost almost 20% of its territory to Russia forces since the invasion began in February 2022.
“Apparently, Zelenskyy’s aim is to use such appeals to the people to raise his plummeting rating, to prove his pseudo-legitimacy and to attract funding from the Western donors,” she said. “Of course, this entire criminal scheme of the Kyiv regime was obviously doomed to fail from the outset.”
Dmitry Medvedev, deputy head of Russia’s Security Council, went further, stating on social media that there could be no talks until Ukraine is “completely and utterly destroyed.”
One week in Kursk: Maps show evolution of Ukrainian incursion as Russia builds trenches
Rafael Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said he is prepared to tour the Kursk nuclear power plant by month’s end, Zakharova said on Wednesday. The Russian Defense Ministry last week accused Ukraine of planning to attack the Kursk plant as part of its incursion into the region, an assertion Kyiv denied.
“We expect that an understanding of the danger that Ukrainian provocations against Russian nuclear power plants represent will prompt the IAEA’s management to take concrete action to ensure safety,” Zakharova said.
Contributing: Reuters