Explosion in the air 110 km from Moscow "potential drone"

“Tomorrow, the United States will announce a new package of military aid to Ukraine.” This was stated by the spokesman for the US National Security Council, John Kirby, explaining that above all it will be “artillery and ammunition for the systems that Kiev’s forces already have.”

An explosion took place in Kolomna, a city in Russia in the Moscow region, 113 km southeast of the capital. The authorities confirmed this, after publishing information and photos about the incident on social media. “The explosion occurred in the air. Most likely we are talking about a drone. But so far it is impossible to say for sure, since they cannot find the wreckage,” law enforcement officials told TASS. A spokesman for the emergency services said “a number of potential facilities were checked” and “no signs of an explosion were found”.

Relief efforts in Zaporizhia after the attack

First, drone strikes up to a hundred kilometers from Moscow, with accusations of US involvement. Now “saboteurs” have infiltrated the Bryansk border region: Russia continues to report attacks on its security coming from Kiev. Two men were killed and a child injured in what President Vladimir Putin described as a “terrorist attack” carried out by “neo-Nazis” in the service of their Western “masters”. According to an advisor to the Ukrainian president, Mykhailo Podolyak, the whole story is just a “classic provocation” from Moscow. For its part, Kiev denounced the attack by Russian drones in Preslav, Kherson region, which would have hit civilians in line to receive humanitarian aid, which resulted in nine injuries. Previously, night bombing of a residential building in Zaporizhia killed two people. Volodymyr Zelensky called it an “act of terror”, echoing Putin’s words. “We will expel all the occupiers, and they will have to answer for everything,” the Ukrainian president added. But in the meantime, the Ukrainian General Staff has admitted that Russian forces are advancing inside the city of Bakhmut in the Donbass, which appears to be about to surrender according to CNN. The attacks took place in Russian territory, according to the governor of the Bryansk region, in the village of Lyubshan and in the village of Sochany, about fifteen kilometers away, by commandos of about forty “saboteurs”. At the first location, according to Putin, the attackers opened fire on a Lada Niva off-road vehicle despite “seeing that there were children on board”. The man who was driving was killed and an 11-year-old boy was injured, emergency services said, but he managed to get two other young children to safety. A few hours later, the governor of Bryansk, Alexander Bogomaz, said that another man had died, but did not specify the circumstances. On the other hand, the news reported by Russian agencies that two adults and two children were taken hostage was not initially confirmed. Only in the evening did the FSB say that the “Ukrainian nationalists” had been “returned to Ukrainian territory”, which had been subjected to “intense artillery bombardment” by Russia. Putin canceled a planned visit to Stavropol in the Caucasus to follow up on developments. He charged that those who carried out today’s attacks were “neo-Nazis and terrorists like those who tortured and killed the people of Donbass for eight years, like those who killed Daria Duzhina in Moscow.” “But they will not succeed, we will crush them,” he added.

The website of the Russian opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta reported that the attack was claimed by a far-right Russian militia allied with Ukrainian forces, the Russian Volunteer Legion, which was founded by oligarch Denis Kapustin in August last year. “It’s time for ordinary citizens of Russia to realize that they are not slaves, to start an uprising, to fight!” says a man who identifies himself as a member of the group in a video, adding that he does not kill civilians. Meanwhile, the Russians condemn other attacks by Ukrainian drones: one without casualties on the village of Sochany, in the same Bryansk region, and the other on the Titkino region, in the Kursk border region, which left one civilian dead and another injured. Then an explosion was reported in a forest near Tula, about 170 kilometers south of Moscow, where various weapons manufacturing industries are concentrated. According to the governor, the drone could be wrecked. Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said that some of the Ukrainian drone strikes, particularly those targeted in December against the Ryazan and Saratov air bases, where three Russian servicemen were killed, “could not have been possible without serious assistance from the United States, including by selecting objectives, providing intelligence and other assistance.”