Russia launches latest drone attack on Kiev as NATO meeting | conflict news

Russia also launched air strikes on Kiev in the early hours of Tuesday morning with Iranian-made Shahed drones.

Russia launched at least 15 drones to attack Kiev and other regions for the second night in a row, as air defense systems engaged in blocking air weapons just hours before Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky met NATO military leaders.

The Ukrainian Air Force said on the messaging application Telegram that Ukrainian air defenses shot down 11 Iranian-made drones launched by Russia in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

Ihor Taborets, the military commander of the Cherkassy region southeast of Kiev, said on the Telegram messaging app: “A difficult night… The enemy attacked our region with ‘witness’.”

Taborets said two people were wounded in the attacks and a fire broke out at a non-residential infrastructure facility. It was not immediately known how many drones were launched over Cherkassy and how many in Kiev.

Serhiy Popko, the head of the military department in Kiev, said earlier that the air attack came on “the 50th day of the Russian Federation’s total invasion of Ukraine”.

Russia also launched air strikes on Kiev and other locations in the early hours of Tuesday morning with Iranian Shahed drones.

The Washington, D.C.-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said the Ukrainian military reported shooting down 26 of its 28 Shah 131 and 136 drones, which Moscow likely intended to be “an apparent response to the 2014 NATO summit”. 2023.”, which started in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, on Tuesday.

Russian drones have also attacked port infrastructure and a grain terminal in the Odessa region, according to Ukrainian commanders.

“Russian drone strikes on port infrastructure also coincide with the first day of the NATO summit in Vilnius and are likely to discourage NATO members from providing more military aid to Ukraine,” the ISW said on Tuesday.

Russia may be threatening the Black Sea grain deal to inform the deal’s original broker, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, that his recent statement in support of Ukraine’s NATO membership and the return of Ukraine’s five Azovistan leaders on July 7 did not go unnoticed. The Kremlin does not appreciate it.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Saturday that Ankara had promised under a prisoner exchange deal to keep the five Ukrainian leaders in Turkey for the duration of the war, and complained that Moscow had not been informed of the move to return them to Kiev.