Disclosure: Our goal is to feature products and services that we think you’ll find interesting and useful. If you purchase them, Entrepreneur may get a small share of the revenue from the sale from our commerce partners.
Like most entrepreneurs, you’re likely battling hectic work weeks to keep your business successful and running. It’s vital for entrepreneurs to take breaks and detach from work, however, to revitalize themselves through activities unrelated to work, whether that’s through traveling or exercising. One of the best ways to destress from your work life is through pursuing non-related work hobbies, and if you’re someone who loves exploring nature from great heights, you may enjoy using a drone.
A drone can be a great way to spend more time in the great outdoors while experiencing stunning sights, and during our Labor Day Sale, you can save big on a powerful dual camera drone, the Ninja Dragons Blade X. For only $79.97 (reg. $199), you can see the world from a totally new perspective. No coupon is needed, but this price drop only lasts through September 4.
Make some new memories away from your desk with the help of the Ninja Dragons Blade X 4K Dual Camera Drone. It can tag along anywhere and give you a bird’s eye view from the sky thanks to its dual camera options — one 4K camera and a secondary 720p camera. And, it’s an excellent option for those new to the world of drones, as it offers easy one-click take-off, landing technology for easy navigation, and simple gesture controls to manage your drone’s travel.
Curious what your drone can see? You can check it all in real time on your device while also navigating the drone from below, thanks to the included remote control. The Ninja Dragons Blade X offers 120 to 150 meters of control distance and an electronic stabilization system that levels on its own for new pilots. And since you’ll want to take this drone on all your adventures, it’s easily portable. It’s foldable and can be tossed in a bag so you can capture stunning views wherever you go.
Immerse yourself in a hobby that lets you see sights near and far.
During the Labor Day Sale, get the Ninja Dragons Blade X 4K Dual Camera Drone for just $79.97 (reg. $199) —no coupon necessary. This deal ends September 4 at 11:59 p.m. Pacific.
KYIV, Ukraine — Russia and Ukraine traded drone attacks early Wednesday, officials said, with Kyiv apparently targeting Moscow again and the Kremlin’s forces launching another bombardment of Ukrainian grain storage depots in what have recently become signature tactics in the almost 18-month war.
A three-hour nighttime Russian drone attack in Ukraine’s southern Odesa region overnight Tuesday caused a blaze at grain facilities, Odesa Regional Military Administration Head Oleh Kiper wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
Ukrainian air defense systems downed nine Shahed drones, Kiper said.
“Unfortunately, there are hits on production and transshipment complexes,” he said, adding that no casualties had been reported.
Russia zeroed in on Odesa last month, crippling significant parts of the port city’s grain facilities, days after President Vladimir Putin broke off Russia’s participation in the Black Sea Grain Initiative. That wartime deal enabled Ukraine’s exports to reach many countries facing the threat of hunger.
Russian officials, meanwhile, claimed to have downed Ukrainian drones in Moscow and the surrounding region early Wednesday, the defense ministry and the mayor said. No casualties were reported in the drone attack, which has become almost a daily occurrence in the Russian capital.
Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said one drone smashed into a building under construction in Moscow City, a prestigious business complex hit by drones twice before. Several windows were broken in two buildings nearby and emergency services responded to the scene.
Russia’s Ministry of Defense said the drone had been electronically jammed.
It blamed the attack on Ukraine and said two other drones were shot down by air defense systems in the Mozhaisk and Khimki areas of the Moscow region. Kyiv officials, as usual, neither confirmed nor denied Ukraine was behind the drone attacks.
Moscow airports briefly closed but have now reopened, according to Russian state media.
Ukraine has since early this year sought to take the war into the heart of Russia. It has increasingly targeted Moscow’s military assets behind the front lines in eastern and southern Ukraine and at the same time has launched drones against Moscow.
Though drone attacks on Russian soil have occurred almost daily in recent weeks, they have caused little damage and no victims. Ukraine hasn’t acknowledged responsibility for the attempted drone strikes.
Kyiv is also trying to keep up the pressure on the Kremlin along multiple fronts, pursuing a counteroffensive at various points along the 1,500-kilometer (900-mile) front line, as well as diplomatically by obtaining pledges of more weaponry from its Western allies, including F-16 warplanes.
___
Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
TEHRAN, Iran — Iran’s Defense Ministry unveiled a drone on Tuesday resembling America’s armed MQ-9 Reaper, claiming that the aircraft is capable of staying airborne for 24 hours and has the range to reach the country’s archenemy Israel.
Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency published a photograph of the drone, called the Mohajer-10, on display at a conference marking Defense Industry Day with what appeared to be smoke-machine fog underneath it.
“Mohajer” means “immigrant” in Farsi and has been a drone line manufactured by the Islamic Republic since 1985.
IRNA said the drone is able to fly up to 24,000 feet with a speed of 210 kph (130 mph), carrying a bomb payload of up to 300 kilograms (660 pounds). It also said the drone could carry electronic surveillance equipment and a camera. Iran’s hard-line President Ebrahim Raisi, a protégé of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, also viewed the drone on Tuesday.
“Today, we can firmly introduce Iran as an advanced and technologic nation to the world,” Raisi said in comments aired on state television.
He reiterated Iran’s stance about friendly relations with “all countries in the world,” adding that Iran’s armed forces will cut off any hand that will reaches out in an attempt to invade Iran, state TV reported.
The Associated Press could not immediately verify the claims about the drone’s capabilities, though an arm of state television shared a video of it taking off from a runway. Long-range drones like the Reaper also require ground stations and satellite communications.
Officials in Israel, which flies its own long-range, high endurance drones, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.
Iran has in the past captured U.S. drones or pieces of them, but there’s no evidence that it has taken a General Atomics’ Reaper, which is flown by the U.S. Air Force and allied American nations as a “hunter-killer” drone that can operate at high altitudes for long hours and follow a target before attacking. North Korea in July showed off drones mirroring the Reaper, possibly designed from publicly available information about the aircraft.
In December 2011, Iran seized an RQ-170 Sentinel flown by the CIA to monitor Iranian nuclear sites after it entered Iranian airspace from neighboring Afghanistan. Iran later reverse-engineered the drone to create their own variants.
In 2019, Iran shot down a U.S. Navy RQ-4A Global Hawk in the Strait of Hormuz amid high tensions over its collapsed nuclear deal with world powers.
The Reaper also carries special significance for Iran, as one reportedly carried out the 2020 strike in Baghdad that killed Qassem Soleimani, a top Iranian general in its paramilitary Revolutionary Guard.
Iran separately said it had provided two types of ballistic missiles to its army and the Guard on Tuesday, including one named for Soleimani.
Iran has unveiled a series of drones it describes as capable of long-endurance flights over the last several years. It remains unclear how they’ve been used in combat.
But other Iranian drones have been a key element of Russia’s continued war on Ukraine. Tehran has offered a series of contradictory explanations about the drones, first denying they supplied them to Moscow and then claiming they sold drones only before the war began. However, the volume of drones used in the conflict show a steady supply by Iran of the bomb-carrying weapons in the war.
In June, the White House said Iran is providing Russia with materials to build a drone manufacturing plant east of Moscow as the Kremlin looks to lock in a steady supply of weaponry.
___
Gambrell reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
THE HAGUE, Netherlands — The United States has given its approval for the Netherlands to deliver F-16s to Ukraine, the Dutch defense minister said Friday, in a major gain for Kyiv even though the fighter jets won’t have an immediate impact on the almost 18-month war
“I welcome the US decision to clear the way for delivery of F-16 jets to Ukraine. It allows us to follow through on the training of Ukrainian pilots,” Dutch Defense Minister Kajsa Ollongren said in a message on X, formerly known as Twitter. “We remain in close contact with European partners to decide on the next steps.”
Ukraine has long pleaded for the sophisticated fighter to give it a combat edge. It recently launched a long-anticipated counteroffensive against the Kremlin’s forces without air cover, placing its troops at the mercy of Russian aviation and artillery.
Apart from delivering the warplanes, Ukraine’s allies also need to train its pilots. Washington says the F-16s, like the advanced U.S. Abrams tanks, will be crucial in the long term as Kyiv faces down Russia.
The Netherlands is part of a Western coalition that also includes Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Luxembourg, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Sweden and the United Kingdom that in July pledged to train Ukrainian pilots to fly F-16s.
Washington must give its blessing because the planes are made in the United States.
Dutch Foreign Minister Wopke Hoekstra said in a message on X that U.S. clearance to send F-16s to Ukraine “marks a major milestone” in Ukraine’s defense.
It was not immediately clear when the first F-16s could be delivered to Ukraine.
As well as the Netherlands, Denmark said in June that training Ukrainian pilots had started and the country was considering delivering jets to Kyiv, but that pilots would need six to eight months of training before a possible donation of aircraft can become a reality.
In a statement to Danish media, Defense Minister Jakob Ellemann-Jensen said that the government has several times said that a donation was “a natural step after the training.”
Meanwhile, Russian air defenses stopped drone attacks on central Moscow and on the country’s ships in the Black Sea, officials said Friday, blaming the attempted strikes on Ukraine.
Defense systems shot down a Ukrainian drone over central Moscow early Friday and some fragments fell on an exhibition center, the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement.
It said the drone was shot down about 4 a.m. (0100 GMT) and there were no injuries or fire caused by the fragments.
However, flights were briefly suspended at all four major Moscow airports.
Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said some of the fragments fell on the grounds of the Expocentre, an exhibition complex adjacent to the Moscow City commercial and office complex that was hit twice by drones in the past month.
The area is about 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) west of the Kremlin. The defense ministry called the latest incident “another terrorist attack by the Kyiv regime.”
Naval forces also destroyed a Ukrainian sea drone that attempted an attack on Russian ships late Thursday in the Black Sea, about 240 kilometers (150 miles) southwest of Sevastopol, the ministry said
The drone was taken out by fire from a patrol boat and a corvette, it said.
It was not possible to verify the claims.
___
Heintz reported from Tallinn, Estonia.
___
Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
Russia thwarted an attack by 20 Ukrainian drones targeting Moscow-annexed Crimea overnight, according to the Russian Defense Ministry
Police and emergency vehicles parked at the side of the wreckage of the drone fell near the Karamyshevskaya embankment to the after a reported drone attack in Moscow, Russia, on Friday, Aug. 11, 2023. The Mayor of Moscow, Sergei Sobyanin said a drone fell in western Moscow after it was shot down by air defense systems. Sobyanin said no-one was hurt when the drone fell near Karamyshevskaya embankment and that no serious damage was caused. Russian social media channels shared videos of what they said was a drone flying low above Moscow and of smoke rising above the Moscow river. (AP Photo)
The Associated Press
KYIV, Ukraine — Russia thwarted an attack by 20 Ukrainian drones targeting Moscow-annexed Crimea overnight, the Russian Defense Ministry said Saturday.
Fourteen drones were shot down by Russian air defenses and a further six were jammed electronically, the ministry said in a Telegram post. No casualties or damage were reported.
Kyiv officials neither confirmed nor denied Ukraine’s involvement in the attacks.
The overnight attacks followed three consecutive days of drone attacks on the Russian capital, Moscow. Firing drones at Russia, after more than 17 months of war, has little apparent military value for Ukraine but the strategy has served to unsettle Russians and bring home to them the conflict’s consequences.
Drone attacks have increased in recent weeks both on Moscow and on Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014 — a move that most of the world considered illegal.
Elsewhere, Russia claimed Saturday it had regained control of the village of Urozhaine in Ukraine’s easternmost Luhansk region in an overnight counterattack.
A 73-year-old woman was killed early Saturday morning in Russian shelling of Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region, according to regional Gov. Oleh Syniehubov.
Ukrainian internal affairs minister Ihor Klymenko said a police officer was killed and 12 people wounded when a guided Russian aerial bomb hit the city of Orikhiv in Ukraine’s partially occupied southern Zaporizhzhia region. Four of the wounded were also police officers, he said.
Local officials said explosions rang out Saturday morning in the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s hometown, but that there were no known casualties.
On Ukraine’s Black Sea coast, the city of Odesa opened several beaches for the first time since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Odesa Gov. Oleh Kiper said that six beaches were open, but he stressed that accessing beaches during air raid alerts was forbidden.
The strategic port and key hub for exporting grain has been subject to repeated missile and drone attacks — particularly since Moscow canceled a landmark grain deal last month amid Kyiv’s grinding efforts to retake its occupied territories — while Russian mines have regularly washed up on the city’s beaches.
___
Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine: https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
Moscow launched a barrage of drone attacks early Sunday at a port in Ukraine’s Odesa region used by Kyiv to export grain, a day ahead of talks between Russia and Turkey where reviving a U.N.-backed grain deal will be high on the agenda.
Kyiv’s air defenses shot down 22 out of the 25 Iranian-made drones destined for the Danube River port infrastructure, Ukraine’s air force said on Telegram on Sunday. At least two people were reported injured.
The Danube River has become Ukraine’s main route for shipping grain after a deal brokered by Turkey and the U.N. allowing Kyiv to use the Black Sea for exports collapsed in July. Moscow has stepped up its attacks of Danube port infrastructure in recent weeks.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is set to meet Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Russia on Monday, where Turkey is expected to push for the restoration of the Black Sea grain deal.
“Russian terrorists continue to attack port infrastructure in the hope of provoking a food crisis and famine in the world,” said Andriy Yermak, the Ukrainian president’s chief of staff, on Telegram following the Russian attack.
Ukrainian officials also said Russian shelling had injured four people in the country’s southeastern Dnipropetrovsk region Sunday morning, while one person had died after attacks on Saturday in the country’s northeastern Sumy region. POLITICO couldn’t independently verify the reports.
That also comes after a top Ukrainian general leading the country’s counteroffensive said on Saturday that Kyiv’s troops had breached Russia’s first defensive line near Zaporizhzhia in southeastern Ukraine after weeks of mine clearance.
In a sign that Russia is also increasingly looking at all possible options to shore up its forces, Moscow has been appealing for fresh recruits through advertizing in the Caucasus and Central Asia, the U.K.’s Defense Ministry said on Sunday. Online adverts offering up to €4,756 in initial salaries have been spotted Armenia and Kazakshtan, as well as schemes offering fast-track Russian citizenship for those who sign up.
Around 280,000 people have signed up for military service in Russia so far this year, the country’s former President Dmitry Medvedev said Sunday. Last year, Russia announced a plan of increasing its troops by 30 percent to 1.5 million.
KYIV — Ukraine’s long-range Beaver drones seem to be making successful kamikaze strikes in the heart of Moscow, but Serhiy Prytula is coy about how much he knows.
“We are not sure whether we are involved in this,” he says with a charming but inscrutable smile, when asked about these mysterious new weapons.
Prytula rose to fame — just like President Volodymyr Zelenskyy — as an actor, TV star and comedian, but is now best known for his contribution to the war, running a foundation that acquires components, helps support domestic arms production and supplies front-line forces. Tracking down parts for drones has proved to be one of his fortes.
Whether or not Prytula played any role in finding parts for the Beaver, it has now joined the ranks of other homegrown creations such as the Shark, Leleka and Valkyrie.
From the outside, his foundation looks like any other nondescript five-story apartment block in the quiet side streets of Kyiv. Inside, it is a chaotic human hive of volunteers, preparing packages and dispatching deliveries to soldiers on the front. On August 9, the team packed 75 drones for military units. That’s barely a drop in the ocean, given the needs of Ukraine’s forces across a 1,000-kilometer front, but every extra eye in the sky can help save dozens of lives.
The crowd of young, energetic volunteers at Prytula’s headquarters epitomizes an important dimension of the war: Ukrainians are increasingly taking matters into their own hands when it comes to weapons supply. With the defense ministry and the traditional state arms sector widely criticized for inefficiency and tarnished by corruption scandals over past years, the country is now witnessing an explosion of private enterprise to deliver kit to the front lines and to ramp up domestic production in the most hazardous of conditions. With arms-makers being prime targets for Russian cruise missiles, factories are spreading their manufacturing over numerous secret locations.
This sense that Ukrainians need to take the initiative at home both by scouring the global arms bazaar for hi-tech gizmos and by making more of their own heavy armor and shells is only amplified by the looming threat of a return to the White House by Donald Trump, who argues that America should not be “sending very much” to Ukraine and that Kyiv should sue for peace with the invader. Other Republican candidates have only heightened Ukrainians’ fears that the next U.S. president could sell out their young democracy to the Kremlin.
In addition to the aerial drones, there have been other homegrown success stories — Ukrainian-made armored vehicles are on the front lines beside U.S. Bradleys and locally made maritime drones have hit Russian ships in the Black Sea.
Not that anyone reckons going it alone is an option. Ukraine cannot even begin to match the vast military expenditure of Russia — Kyiv is expected to spend €24 billion on defense over 2023, while Russia is probably splurging well over €80 billion — so foreign assistance will always prove vital to keeping Ukraine in the fight.
But that’s no reason to sit idly by. Almost an entire country has mobilized for national defense, and there are many ways in which entrepreneurial private suppliers are now proving nimbler than state behemoths and bureaucrats in getting soldiers what they need.
When it came to the key question — on every Ukrainian’s mind — of continued Western support, Prytula stressed the efforts that Ukrainians were making to defend themselves made it less likely that outside aid would diminish. “I am convinced that they will keep supplying us with weapons because the world sees the war efforts of Ukrainian society.”
Beaver blitz
The back story of the Beaver is a closely guarded secret.
Last year, Ukrainian blogger and volunteer Ihor Lachenkov announced he was aiming to collect 20 million hryvnia (about €500,000) to produce and buy five Beaver drones for military intelligence, and later posted pictures of himself hugging one. Since then drones that looked like Beavers have hammered Russian oil depots and other military targets deep inside Russian territory and even hit Moscow’s business district. Officially, Ukraine is saying nothing about where this kit is coming from, and men such as Lachenkov and Prytula provide a useful smokescreen.
The country is now witnessing an explosion of private enterprise to deliver kit to the front lines | Sergey Supinsky/AFP via Getty Images
Prytula in late July also showed off grinning pictures of himself walking past three Beaver drones on a landing strip, quipping ironically: “We have no idea what can fly to Moscow.”
Since the full-scale invasion in February 2022, Prytula’s foundation has raised $135 million, which has been used to buy more than 7,000 drones, 1,200 vehicles, over 17,000 communication devices and much more.
When asked about his role in getting the Beaver drones, Prytula diplomatically said a volunteer’s job is to buy what the military needs and hand it over. “But it is not always necessary to talk about it. We honestly always say that we have nothing to do with it. When we see oil bases are exploding somewhere in Russia, or that there are some attacks on military facilities, we are glad that our army has learned to take out the enemy outside the country,” Prytula said.
Indeed, Prytula’s volunteers play a key middleman role in acquiring components more quickly than the state bureaucracy can.
China is a key part of the puzzle as the Ukrainian defense ministry cannot buy Chinese-made civilian drones directly. Shenzhen-based drone maker DJI no longer openly sells to Russia or to Ukraine, so the key trick is to acquire their wares quickly from third countries, or pick up parts and components internationally that can be assembled by Ukrainian technicians. There is a boom in small Ukrainian arms producers, with more than 100 companies active in the field.
“For the Russians, it was always easier to get [the Chinese products] in the never-ending race. So, when I hear Ukrainians managed to snatch up 10,000 components for … drones from Russians, I am happy,” Prytula said, sitting in his office, beside a giant wooden map of Ukraine.
This sense that Ukrainians need to take the initiative at home is only amplified by the looming threat of a return to the White House by Donald Trump, who argues that America should not be “sending very much” to Ukraine and that Kyiv should sue for peace with the invader | Brandon Bell/Getty Images
“The defense ministry also can’t buy [drones] that are not in serial production yet. But we can, and the producers can reinvest the money to increase the number, if soldiers’ feedback from the front was good,” Prytula continued. “So, by donating money people are not only helping the army, but also stimulating domestic military production.”
The game-changing role of drone producers has also made them a target. Over the weekend, Russia attacked a theater in the center of Chernihiv, a city north of Kyiv, where drone producers and volunteers had organized a closed meeting with the help of the local military administration. Most of them managed to escape to shelter but people walking around the theater on the central square did not, with seven killed and 129 injured.
Bringing it all back home
While almost everyone now wants to get involved in the defense business, that wasn’t always the case. Just as Russia was building up its military from 1991 to 2014, Ukraine neglected its own arms factories. In the wild years following the collapse of the Soviet Union, illegal networks smuggled out arms. While the country remained a heavyweight military producer, it focused on export earnings rather than tailoring weapons for Ukraine’s own forsaken troops.
“No one predicted any military conflicts either with Russia or other countries,” Maksym Polyvianyi, acting director of the National Association of Ukrainian Defense Industries, told POLITICO. “In a way, Russia’s 2014 invasion boosted our defense industry. Dozens of defense companies appeared and started the modernization of Ukrainian armory and the army.”
Still, the old scourge of corruption held the country back, even after Russia seized Crimea in 2014. Under the presidency of Petro Poroshenko, the state arms industry was rocked by scandals in which money was siphoned off, even as the country faced open conflict against Russia in the east.
Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022 forced another change, however, accelerating diversification from the state industrial complex. “As of 2022, Ukrainian armed forces buy up to 70 percent of defense products from private military companies,” Polyvianyi said.
Under the presidency of Petro Poroshenko, the state arms industry was rocked by scandals in which money was siphoned off, even as the country faced open conflict against Russia in the east | Chris McGrath/Getty Images
With the start of the full-scale invasion, Ukraine’s defense producers became primary targets for Russian missiles. Many were bombed. But others managed to relocate to western Ukraine and spread out production.
“You have to be creative to survive nowadays. Two months after the start of the invasion, we resumed our work,” Vladislav Belbas, director general of Ukrainian Armor, told POLITICO. Since 2018, Ukrainian Armor produced the Varta and Novator armored vehicles, as well as 60mm, 82mm, and 120 mm-caliber mortars for the army. “We recently restarted production even though we’ve lost an important components contractor. It is now located on the territory controlled by Russia.”
Secrecy is also crucial. “We do everything to protect our staff, hide information about our production whereabouts. We move and test equipment at night, when it is more difficult to track us. We try not to concentrate equipment in one place,” Belbas said.
Oleksandr Kamyshin, Ukraine’s strategic industries minister, stressed output was rising dramatically but that it was inconceivable to match Russia without major foreign support. “In seven months of 2023, we made 10 times more artillery and mortar ammo than in the entire 2022. But we are still very far from what we need,” he told POLITICO. “Today we have a war of such a scale that the entire capacity of the free world is not enough to support our consumption. We definitely cannot do this without help.”
Ministry malaise
The defense ministry — the main supplier of weapons, food, uniforms and other necessities — is struggling to shake off a reputation for graft and inefficiency.
In a high-profile profiteering scandal earlier this year, it transpired the ministry had paid absurdly inflated prices for soldiers’ rations to a contractor. The ministry denies violations, but keeps hiding behind military secrecy.
Oleksandr Kamyshin, Ukraine’s strategic industries minister, stressed output was rising dramatically but that it was inconceivable to match Russia without major foreign support | Sergei Supinsky/AFP via Getty Images
Other more recent scandals and procurement hiccups have focused on the ministry’s failure to secure delivery of everything it paid for. In private, Ukrainian officials admit the defense ministry is not up to scratch in supplying the army, and some Ukrainian lawmakers openly criticize the minister, Oleksii Reznikov, over his record on procurement.
The Ukrainian government has found alternative ways to cover some of the needs of the Ukrainian army, with the digital transformation ministry engaging in drone supplies, using state donations platform UNITED 24, and liberalizing customs and production rules for drones in Ukraine.
“President Zelenskyy took domestic defense production under personal control,” Kamyshin said.
Prytula, the founder of the foundation, said it was hard to judge the defense ministry during war. “They are quite successful when it comes to accumulating help in the international arena, but have some troubles at home. I think the defense ministry is doing what it can in terms of its responsibility. But with such a war it is never enough,” he said.
But Polyvianyi noted that’s where volunteers were coming into their own as parallel supply lines, filling the gaps left by the ministry. “The task of the state today is to provide heavy equipment. Without help, the state cannot provide all the needs of each army unit. Charitable foundations work in close connection with the ministry of defense and other structures.”
That’s a partnership in which Prytula is one of the most important players. But he is among the first to admit that all of Ukraine’s Herculean efforts at home will amount to nothing without the support of the international coalition.
“So it is hard to imagine we can win if we’re left on our own. As in the war of two formerly Soviet armies, the one with more people and weapons will win. Only better technology can help change the situation,” Prytula said. “It will be very difficult for us to fight alone with such a huge monster. But the civilized world has two options: to help us restore our 1991 borders, or to throw away all claims of shared values and just watch us bleed.”
KYIV — Russia’s missile strike on the Ukrainian city of Chernihiv at the weekend not only killed seven people and injured 120, it also scored a second hit for the Kremlin by stoking internal anger against drone-makers, who are accused of turning the city into a target with a security blunder.
On a bright holiday morning, as Ukrainians were returning from church on Saturday after celebrating the Apple Feast of the Savior — a harvest festival of the Orthodox church — a Russian Iskander-type ballistic missile exploded over the theater in the center of Chernihiv, a city north of Kyiv, only some 70 kilometers from the border with Russia.
The prosecutor’s office has started an investigation into a war crime that led to a mass murder.
Online commentators, however, are already pronouncing guilty verdicts on an unexpected group of former national heroes, blaming not only Russia, but also Ukrainian drone producers and military volunteers who organized and advertised an event on the same day at the theater that was ultimately targeted, with the help of local military administration.
“Is Russia to blame for the fact that it struck the theater in Chernihiv and killed civilians there? Of course. But didn’t the organizers have to turn on their brains and think that such an event is highly likely to become a target for Russian missiles? Especially if they constantly say that drones are a weapon of victory? This is about responsibility,” Sergiy Fursa, deputy director of Dragon Capital, an investment company, said in a Facebook post.
Ukrainian military volunteer Roman Sinicyn chimed in, adding that by organizing their event in the city center so close to Russia, Ukrainian military producers, soldiers, and volunteers, as well as the local military administration, demonstrated supreme recklessness. “However, we should not shift all the blame on a specific and effective volunteer organization. The event was approved by officials, not volunteers. And quite specific representatives of ministries, special services, and the military were aware of the event,” Sinicyn said.
Maria Berlinska and Lyuba Shypovych from the Dignitas Fund, a Ukrainian military volunteer organization that has pushed for systemic changes in Ukraine’s drone production and supply industry as well as the training of drone operators, are now taking most of the online hate from Ukrainians.
Dignitas Fund was among the organizers of the “Angry Birds” event, together with Chernihiv’s regional military administration and Ukraine’s defense innovation cluster Brave 1.
The event organizers publicly announced the time and date of the meeting and said what city it was happening in, but revealed the exact location only to participants some four hours before the start.
Someone then leaked that information to the Russians or Russia intercepted the communication. Russian state news agency RIA Novosti reported Russian forces were targeting a military meeting and even published an invitation with detailed maximum-security measures for the attendees who were not supposed to wear their military uniforms.
Both Shypovych and Berlinska are declining to give any comments to the media as they are now taking part in the investigation of the event, Shypovych told POLITICO.
Residents of Chernihiv clean up after the missile attack | Paula Bronstein /Getty Images
According to social media posts by both volunteers, the participants in the event survived the attack, as most of them were able to escape to a shelter. The security services are now investigating the information leak that triggered the Russian missile launch, Shypovych wrote.
After the wave of online hate, many members of Ukraine’s military, NGOs, and cultural sphere wrote posts in support of Berlinska, who has been a vocal critic of Ukraine’s defense ministry, and who has raised awareness of the Ukrainian authorities’ initial neglect of the crucial role that military drones should play in Ukraine’s defense against Russian invasion.
“Believe me, I would want to die instead of those people,” Berlinska said in a statement.
Russia said it shot down three Ukrainian drones flying toward Moscow and its surrounding regions on Wednesday, in the sixth consecutive day of attacks on the capital region.
In the early hours of Wednesday morning, Russian air defense systems shot down two drones over the Mozhaisk and Khimki districts, the country’s defense ministry said on Telegram. A third drone was jammed with electronic warfare and lost control, hitting a building under construction in the Moscow City district. According to the ministry, there were no casualties.
“City emergency services are inspecting the area in the perimeter of the City for the consequences of the strike,” Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said on his Telegram channel. “Several windows in two neighboring five-story buildings were blown out.”
Russian state-owned media outlet RIA Novosti reported that the third drone damaged the glazing of a Moscow tower and windows on two floors of a residential building. Wreckage of the drone that fell over the Khimki region also caused minor damage to a private house and a non-residential building.
Russia accused Kyiv of attempting to carry out a “terrorist attack,” but Ukraine did not immediately comment on the attacks or claim responsibility.
RIA also reported that air traffic at Moscow’s Vnukovo, Domodedovo and Sheremetyevo airports was disrupted, with several delays and cancelations. Air traffic later returned to normal, according to Russia’s Federal Air Transport Agency.
A separate drone attack in Russia’s Belgorod region near the Ukrainian border killed three people on Wednesday, the governor of the region said.
These are the latest in a series of drone attacks that have increasingly targeted Russian territory, including its capital in recent weeks. Wednesday’s strike was the sixth straight night of aerial attacks on the Moscow region, according to AFP.
On Wednesday, a spokesperson from the U.S. State Department said the United States does not encourage attacks inside Russian territory, but that it is Ukraine’s choice how it defends itself from Russia.
Debris from a large-scale Russian missile attack on Kyiv has killed two people and injured several more, in the largest air strike on the Ukrainian capital since spring.
In the early hours of Wednesday morning, Russia launched 28 missiles and 16 drones, according to the Ukrainian Air Force. Ukrainian air defense forces destroyed all missiles and 15 out of the 16 drones within the regions of Kyiv, Cherkasy, Odesa, Mykolaiv and Zhytomyr.
“Tonight, almost all enemy air targets destroyed,” Air Force Commander Mykola Oleshchuk said on Telegram. “Thanks to all the defenders who joined in repelling the air attack!”
Debris from the downed missiles and drones fell in the Darnytskyi and Shevchenkivskyi districts of Kyiv, killing two people and injuring three more. The two victims were security guards, aged 26 and 36 years old. Several fires broke out in the two districts, damaging nonresidential buildings.
This was the largest strike on Kyiv in months, said Kyiv’s City Military Administration.
“Kyiv has not experienced such a powerful attack since spring,” Sergey Popko, head of CMVA, said on Telegram. “The enemy carried out a massive, combined attack using drones and missiles.”
Mykhailo Podolyak, adviser to the head of Zelenskyy’s office, called the attack on Kyiv an “unquestionably deliberate attack on the civilian population.”
Some fires were reported outside of the city as well, in the wider Kyiv region, where several residential buildings were damaged.
Also in the early hours of Wednesday morning, Russia said it shot down multiple attempted air strikes by Ukrainian forces over several regions.
In the Pskov region, located on Russia’s western flank near the borders of Latvia and Estonia, several military transport aircraft caught fire as a result of the attack, reported Russian state-run news agency TASS.
In central Russia, the Russian defense ministry said it shot down all attempted air strikes and no casualties were reported. Alexander Bogomaz, governor of the Bryansk region where seven drones were reportedly shot down, said Ukrainian forces tried to attack a TV tower in the region, without success.
Three airports in Moscow were temporarily closed Wednesday, but the restrictions were later lifted, TASS reported.
Moscow also said it thwarted an attack east of Snake Island in the Black Sea on Wednesday, destroying a Ukrainian high-speed military boat.
Ukraine’s drone attacks have increasingly targeted Russian territory in recent months, including its capital, Moscow. Ukraine did not immediately comment on the attacks or claim responsibility.
KYIV, Ukraine — Moscow unleashed a massive missile and drone barrage on western Ukraine Sunday, following through on its promise to retaliate for a Ukrainian attack on a Russian tanker.
Russian and Ukrainian shelling across the country overnight killed in at least six people, officials said.
Separately, Moscow’s second-largest airport briefly suspended flights early Sunday following a foiled drone attack near the Russian capital.
Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched 70 attack drones and missiles, including cruise missiles from aircraft over the Caspian Sea and Iranian-made, Shahed-136/131 strike UAVs.
Serhiy Tyurin, deputy head of Ukraine’s Khmelnytsky region military administration, said three waves of missiles hit the Starokostiantyniv area, damaging several buildings and igniting a fire at a warehouse. The strike may have been intended for the city’s airfield, officials said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the facilities of aircraft engine manufacturer Motor Sich in the Zaporizhzhia region had also come under attack.
The Russian barrage came after a Ukrainian drone attack on a Russian tanker in the Black Sea near Crimea late Friday. Ukraine also struck a major Russian port with drones earlier the same day.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova condemned what she called a Ukrainian “terrorist attack” on a civilian vessel in the Kerch Strait.
“There can be no justification for such barbaric actions, they will not go unanswered and their authors and perpetrators will inevitably be punished,” Zakharova posted on the Telegram messaging app.
An official with Ukraine’s Security Service confirmed to The Associated Press that a Ukrainian drone packed with 450 kilograms (992 pounds) of explosive the service struck the tanker that as transporting fuel for Russian forces. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.
Russia’s Federal Agency for Marine and River Transport posted on Telegram that although the drone blasted a hole in the tanker’s engine room, there were no casualties among the 11 crew members. On Sunday, a Ukrainian missile hit the Chonhar bridge that connects the Russian-occupied Kherson region and northern Crimea.
The strike caused minor damage to the bridge’s roadway, said Vladimir Saldo, the Moscow-installed leader of the Kherson region. He also said that several more rockets had been shot down by air defense forces at the time of the attack.
The bridge, which is one of three key road bridges connecting the Crimean peninsula to the mainland, was previously attacked on July 22 and 29.
Two of the six fatalities overnight Sunday occurred during a Russian air strike in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, according to the head of the local regional military administration, Oleh Syniehubov. Another four people were injured.
Zelenskyy said that a guided bomb had hit a blood transfusion center in the area’s Kupyan district late on August 5.
“This war crime alone says everything about Russian aggression,” Zelenskyy wrote on social media. “Defeating terrorists is a matter of honor for everyone who values life.”
Heavy shelling continued along the frontline in Eastern Ukraine as Kyiv continues to push forward with its ongoing counteroffensive. Elsewhere in the Kharkiv region, a 58-year-old woman was killed and a 66-year-old man was hospitalized after Russian shelling of the village of Podoly, an official said. In Ukraine’s eastern Kupyan region, Russian missiles injured a 55-year-old man and ignited a forest fire, officials said on social media. Russian attacks in the Donetsk region villages of Torske and Niu-York killed two people, local governor Pavlo Kyrylenko posted on social media.
Ukrainian shelling in Russian-held Donetsk killed a woman in her eighties, the city’s Moscow-appointed mayor Alexei Kulemzin said Sunday. The shelling also set the main building of a university on fire, according to the Moscow-installed head of the illegally annexed region, Denis Pushilin.
Russia’s Emergency Situations Ministry said that the blaze caused the building’s roof to collapse, but that there were no casualties.
Moscow’s Vnukovo airport, located 15 kilometers (9 miles) southwest of the Russian capital, briefly suspended flights Sunday morning after a drone was shot down in the airspace around the city. The attack was one of four strikes on the Russian capital in the space of a month, spotlighting Moscow’s vulnerability as Russia’s war in Ukraine drags into its second year.
The drone was destroyed by air defense systems in the Podolsk region of the Moscow suburbs, the Russian defense ministry said.
The Russian defense ministry said no one was injured from the abortive drone attack, although Russian media outlet Baza later reported that a 77-year-old man suffered a shrapnel wound to his hand. The reports could not be independently verified.
Ukrainian authorities, which generally avoid commenting on attacks on Russian soil, didn’t say whether it launched the raid.
Flights were last halted at the airport on July 30, when two drones crashed into the Moscow City business district after being jammed by Russian air defenses.
KYIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian drones hit a Russian tanker in the Black Sea near Crimea late Friday night, according to Russian officials and video circulating on social media.
The strike was the second sea attack involving drones in one day, after Ukraine struck a major Russian port earlier on Friday.
As Kyiv’s naval capabilities grow, the Black Sea is becoming an increasingly important battleground in the war.
Three weeks ago, Moscow withdrew from a key export agreement that allowed Ukraine to ship millions of tons of grain across the Black Sea for sale on world markets. In the wake of that withdrawal, Russia carried out repeated strikes on Ukrainian ports, including Odesa.
An official with Ukraine’s Security Service confirmed to The Associated Press that the service was behind the attack on the tanker, which was transporting fuel for Russian forces. A sea drone, filled with 450 kilograms (992 pounds) of TNT, was used for the attack, added the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to give official statements.
“The Sig tanker … suffered a hole in the engine room near the waterline on the starboard side, presumably as a result of a sea drone attack,” Russia’s Federal Agency for Marine and River Transport wrote on Telegram, adding that there were no casualties among the 11 crew members.
Vladimir Rogov, a Kremlin-installed official in Ukraine’s partially occupied southern Zaporizhzhia region, said several members of the ship’s crew were wounded because of broken glass.
Without specifying that Ukraine was responsible for the drone strike, Vasyl Malyuk, who leads Ukraine’s Security Service, said that “such special operations are conducted in the territorial waters of Ukraine and are completely legal.” Any such explosions, he said, are “an absolutely logical and effective step with regard to the enemy.”
The attack briefly halted traffic on the Kerch Bridge, as well as ferry transport.
Tugboats were deployed to assist the tanker, which is under United States sanctions for helping provide jet fuel to Russian forces fighting in Syria, according to Russia’s Tass news agency.
Ukraine’s earlier strike on Novorossiysk halted maritime traffic for a few hours and marked the first time a commercial Russian port has been targeted in the nearly 18-month-old conflict. The port has a naval base, shipbuilding yards and an oil terminal, and is key for exports. It lies about 110 kilometers (about 60 miles) east of Crimea.
Elsewhere, a two-day summit on finding a peaceful settlement to the war kicked off in Saudi Arabia.
Senior officials from around 40 countries – but not Russia – will aim to agree key principles on how to end the conflict.
“It is very important because in such matters as food security, the fate of millions of people in Africa, Asia, and other parts of the world directly depends on how fast the world will be in implementing the Peace Formula,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said of the summit. “I am grateful to Saudi Arabia for this platform for negotiations.”
The main Ukrainian envoy to the summit in Jeddah, chief Ukrainian presidential aide Andriy Yermak, spoke of the talks on Friday night in a television interview published on his Telegram account: “I expect that the conversation will be difficult, but behind us is truth, behind us goodness,” he said.
TEHRAN, Iran — Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard launched a surprise military drill Wednesday on disputed islands in the Persian Gulf, just as the U.S. military increase its presence in the region over recent ship seizures by Tehran.
The drill focused primarily on Abu Musa Island, though the Guard also landed forces on the Greater Tunb Island as well, Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency reported. Swarms of small, fast boats took part, along with paratroopers, drones and truck-launched surface-to-sea missile systems, footage aired on state television showed.
“We always try for security and tranquility; it is our way,” the Guard’s chief, Gen. Hossein Salami, said in a televised address during the drill. “Our nation is vigilant, and it gives harsh responses to all threats, complicated seditions and secret scenarios and hostilities.”
Salami later told state TV: “There is absolutely no need for the presence of America or its European or non-European allies in the region.”
The drill comes as thousands of Marines and sailors on both the amphibious assault ship USS Bataan and the USS Carter Hall, a landing ship, are on their way to the Persian Gulf. Already, the U.S. has sent A-10 Thunderbolt II warplanes, F-16 and F-35 fighters, as well as the destroyer USS Thomas Hudner, to the region.
The Pentagon has said the deployment is “in response to recent attempts by Iran to threaten the free flow of commerce in the Strait of Hormuz and its surrounding waters.” Some 20% of the world’s oil passes through the narrow waterway connecting the Persian Gulf to the wider world and the U.S. views it as crucial to both its national security and keeping global energy prices stable.
Meanwhile, Iran now enriches uranium closer than ever to weapon-grade levels after the collapse of its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.
The use of Abu Musa and Greater Tunb in the drill also provides another message to the region. Those two islands remain claimed by the United Arab Emirates, home to Abu Dhabi and Dubai. Iran’s late shah seized the islands in 1971 just before the UAE became an independent country and Tehran has held the islands since. Lesser Tunb Island was also seized.
Seizing those islands reminds Iran’s neighbors of its military might as Tehran’s diplomats have been trying to convince Gulf Arab countries allied with the U.S. that “foreigners” aren’t needed to secure the region.
Meanwhile, Iran has been trying to signal its displeasure over recent comments about the islands made by Russia, which Tehran has supplied with bomb-carrying drones for their war in Ukraine. Russia earlier this summer in a joint statement with the Gulf Cooperation Council called for “bilateral negotiations or the International Court of Justice” to decide who should control the islands. That prompted an outcry in Iran and Tehran summoned the Russian envoy over the remarks.
___
Gambrell reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
KYIV — An overnight naval drone attack against a Russian tanker in the Black Sea signals a potential new front in the Ukraine war, with Kyiv delivering its strongest message to date that it is willing to target Moscow’s all-important shipments of oil and fuel.
The battle for supremacy in the Black Sea is ramping up fast, with massive implications for global energy and food security. The attack on the tanker off Crimea came only a day after another Ukrainian marine drone — a flat, arrowhead-shaped vessel packed with explosives — targeted a Russian naval base near the port of Novorossiysk, badly damaging a warship.
“The tanker was damaged in the Kerch Strait during an attack by the Ukrainian Armed Forces,” Russia’s state-run TASS news agency reported on Saturday. “The crew is safe, the Maritime Rescue Center informed us. The engine room was damaged. Two tugboats arrived at the scene of an emergency with a tanker in the Kerch Strait, the question of the towing vessel is being resolved,” it said.
Russia’s Federal Marine and River Transport Agency reported it was a SIG oil and chemical tanker — a ship whose owner, St. Petersburg-based company Transpetrochart, was sanctioned by the U.S. in 2019 for supplying jet fuel for Russian forces in Syria.
Tensions are rising in the Black Sea after Russia last month announced it was withdrawing from the U.N.-brokered Black Sea Grain Initiative and started attacking Ukrainian ports on the Black Sea coast and on the Danube River with missiles, destroying tens of thousands of tons of Ukrainian grain.
After those attacks and the blockade, Ukrainian officials issued a statement in July that Russian vessels will be no longer safe in the Black Sea. Kyiv’s defense ministry said in a statement that such vessels “may be considered by Ukraine as carrying military cargo with all the corresponding risks” from midnight Friday.
On Saturday, Kyiv announced a “war risk area” around Russian ports on the Black Sea, specifically citing the ports of Novorossiysk, Anapa, Gelendzhik, Tuapse, Sochi and Taman. The declaration will be in effect from August 23 “until further notice,” it said.
‘Completely legal’
Marine Traffic, an online maritime tracking site, has the latest position of the SIG tanker fixed near the Kerch Strait “at anchor.”
Russia’s Marine and River Transport Agency reported all 11 crew members on board were safe and that the tanker was struck in the engine room near the waterline on the starboard side, presumably as a result of an attack by a marine drone. By morning, the water pouring to the engine room has been staunched, and the vessel was afloat, Russian official said.
Ukraine almost never directly takes responsibility for these kinds of attacks. However, Vasyl Malyuk, head of the Security Service of Ukraine, or SBU, has previously claimed responsibility for the attacks on the Crimean bridge and hinted that there will be more similar attacks soon.
“Anything that happens with the ships of the Russian Federation or the Crimean Bridge is an absolutely logical and effective step in relation to the enemy. Moreover, such special operations are conducted in the territorial waters of Ukraine and are completely legal,” Malyuk said in a statement on Saturday.
“So, if the Russians want that to stop, they should leave the territorial waters of Ukraine and our land. And the sooner they do it, the better it will be for them. Because we will one hundred percent defeat the enemy in this war.”
Waters near Russian-occupied Crimea and the Kerch Strait are Ukrainian territorial waters, according to international maritime law.
“Since 1991, Russia has systematically used the territorial waters of Ukraine to organize armed aggressions: against the Georgian people and against the people of Syria,” the Ukrainian Defense Ministry said in a social media post on Saturday.
“Today, they terrorize peaceful Ukrainian cities and destroy grain, condemning hundreds of millions to starvation. It’s time to say to the Russian killers, ‘It’s enough.’ There are no more safe waters or peaceful harbors for you in the Black and Azov Seas,” the ministry said.
Russian authorities say three Ukrainian drones attacked Moscow in the early hours on Sunday, injuring one person and prompting a temporary closure of one of four airports around the Russian capital
A view of the damaged skyscraper is shown in the “Moscow City” business district after a reported drone attack in Moscow, Russia, early Sunday, July 30, 2023. (AP Photo)
The Associated Press
Russian authorities say three Ukrainian drones attacked Moscow in the early hours on Sunday, injuring one person and prompting a temporary closure of one of four airports around the Russian capital.
The Russian Defense Ministry referred to the incident as an “attempted terrorist attack by the Kyiv regime” and said three drones targeted the city. One was shot down in the surrounding Moscow region by air defense systems and two others were jammed. Those two crashed into the Moscow City business district in the capital.
Photos from the site of the crash showed the facade of a skyscraper damaged on one floor. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said the attack “insignificantly damaged” the outsides of two buildings in the Moscow City district. A security guard was injured, Russia’s state news agency Tass reported, citing emergency officials.
No flights went into or out of the Vnukovo airport on the southern outskirts of the city for about an hour, according to Tass, and the air space over Moscow and the outlying regions was temporarily closed for any aircraft.
Several drones attacked the center of Moscow in the early hours of Sunday morning, in the latest assault on Russian territory that the city’s mayor blamed on Kyiv.
The drones hit two high-rise buildings in an area called Moscow City, a posh business district in the center of the Russian capital, Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said in a Telegram statement on Sunday.
“Ukrainian drones attacked tonight. The facades of two city office towers were slightly damaged. There are no victims or injured,” Sobyanin said.
Russian media reported that a 50-story building in Moscow City was evacuated. And Russian social media users posted videos of blasts.
Russian media channel Astra reported that one of the drones damaged the 10th floor of an office building in Moscow City, where at least three Russian ministries have their offices — the Ministry of Economic Development, Ministry of Trade and Ministry of Digital Development.
Ukraine did not officially take responsibility for the attack. “We can neither confirm nor deny,” Andriy Yusov, representative of Ukraine’s Military Intelligence, told POLITICO. Ukrainian officials almost never admit responsibility for military operations in Russian territory.
The Russian Defense Ministry said a third drone was shot down in the Moscow region.
The attack on Moscow happened the night after Ukrainian Armed Forces hit a key bridge in Chonhar. The Friday night bombing severely damaged one of the strategic supply routes for the Russian army occupying the south of Ukraine, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry Strategic Communications Center said in a statement on Saturday.
Vladimir Saldo, a Russian-installed official in the occupied part of the Kherson region, had said earlier Saturday that Ukrainian forces launched 12 Storm Shadow missiles at the bridge in Chonhar. He said that all missiles were shot down by Russian air defense, providing no evidence for his claim.
This is not the first attack on the Chonhar bridge. On June 22, Ukrainians attacked the bridge with a Storm Shadow missile, Brigadier General Oleksiy Gromov, chief of the Main Operational Department of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, said in a July 5 interview with the Ukrainian state news agency Ukrinform.
The attack on the Chonhar bridge came the day after a missile damaged the city center of Taganrog in the Rostov region of Russia. Vasily Golubev, the governor of the Rostov region, said a missile fell near Chekhov Sad cafe in the city center. Sixteen people were wounded, but no one died, he said in a statement.
Ukraine did not claim responsibility for the Taganrog attack. The Russian Defense Ministry accused Kyiv of using a Soviet-made S200 missile to attack Taganrog. It said air defense shot down the weapon but falling debris caused damage and injuries.
Russian independent media Istories reported that a missile hit 10 kilometers away from Russian strategic bombers at an airfield used to bomb Ukraine.
The pictures posted on the Chinese company’s website show a tall, Caucasian man with a crew cut and flattened nose inspecting body armor at its factory.
“This spring, one of our customers came to our company to confirm the style and quantity of bulletproof vests, and carefully tested the quality of our vests,” Shanghai H Win, a manufacturer of military-grade protective gear, proudly reported on its website in March. The customer “immediately directly confirmed the order quantity of bulletproof vests and subsequent purchase intention.”
The identity of the smiling customer isn’t clear, but there’s a fair chance he was Russian: According to customs records obtained by POLITICO, Russian buyers have declared orders for hundreds of thousands of bulletproof vests and helmets made by Shanghai H Win — the items listed in the documents match those in the company’s online catalog.
Evidence of this kind shows that China, despite Beijing’s calls for peace, is pushing right up to a red line in delivering enough nonlethal, but militarily useful, equipment to Russia to have a material impact on President Vladimir Putin’s 17-month-old war on Ukraine. The protective gear would be sufficient to equip many of the men mobilized by Russia since the invasion. Then there are drones that can be used to direct artillery fire or drop grenades, and thermal optical sights to target the enemy at night.
These shipments point to a China-sized loophole in the West’s attempts to hobble Putin’s war machine. The sale of so-called dual-use technology that can have both civilian and military uses leaves just enough deniability for Western authorities looking for reasons not to confront a huge economic power like Beijing.
The wartime strength of China’s exports of dual-use products to Russia is confirmed by customs data. And, while Ukraine is a customer of China too, its imports of most of the equipment covered in this story have fallen sharply, the figures show.
Russia has imported more than $100 million-worth of drones from China so far this year — 30 times more than Ukraine. And Chinese exports of ceramics, a component used in body armor, increased by 69 percent to Russia to more than $225 million, while dropping by 61 percent to Ukraine to a mere $5 million, Chinese and Ukrainian customs data show.
“What is very clear is that China, for all its claims that it is a neutral actor, is in fact supporting Russia’s positions in this war,” said Helena Legarda, a lead analyst specializing in Chinese defense and foreign policy at the Mercator Institute for China Studies, a Berlin think tank.
Were China to cross the red line and sell weapons or military equipment to Russia, Legarda said she would expect the EU to enforce secondary sanctions targeting enablers of Putin’s war of aggression.
But, she added, equipment like body armor, thermal imaging, and even commercial drones that can be used in offensive frontline operations are unlikely to trigger a response.
“Then there’s this situation that we’re in at the moment — all these dual-use components or equipment and how you handle those,” Legarda explained. “I would not expect the EU to be able to agree to sanctions on that.”
Disappearing customer
Shanghai H Win, like other Chinese companies producing dual-use equipment, has enjoyed a surge in business since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
According to customs records obtained by POLITICO, Russia has ordered hundreds of thousands of bulletproof vests and helmets made by Shanghai H Win | Genya Savilov/AFP via Getty Images
“Because of the war, a lot of trading companies are looking for us and ask: ‘Are you making this kind of vest?’ We received a lot of inquiries,” a sales representative told POLITICO over the phone.
At first, the representative said Shanghai H Win wasn’t allowed to export directly to Russia unless the Chinese military issues a certificate and it can provide documentary proof of its final customer.
Yet when asked who the man in the pictures was, and where he was from, the representative denied that he was even a customer — even though the website said so.
“He is our customer’s customer. We cannot ask him directly, ‘Where are you from?’ But I guess maybe he is from Europe — maybe Ukraine, maybe Poland, even maybe from Russia. I’m not sure.”
Shortly after the call, Shanghai H Win took down the post featuring the mystery shopper from its website.
Who are the buyers?
So, who exactly are those customers? Evidence of deals — importers, suppliers, and product descriptions — can be found in a registry of declarations of conformity by anyone with access to the Russian internet who is familiar with international customs classifications.
In an earlier story, POLITICO searched these filings and found evidence that sniper bullets made in the United States were reaching Russia, where they were freely available on the black market.
The declarations enable the final buyer to certify that the products are genuine and, in effect, make it possible to import goods without the express consent of the maker. If goods are traded through an intermediary, the maker may not even be aware that its goods are going to Russia. The registry is, however, searchable so it’s still easy to find the ultimate buyers of the Chinese kit.
One is Silva, a company headquartered in the remote Eastern Siberian region of Buryatia. It filed declarations in January of this year detailing orders for 100,000 bulletproof vests and 100,000 helmets. The manufacturer? Shanghai H Win.
Such importers often bear the hallmarks of “one-day” firms, as shell companies are known in Russia, set up by actors who want to conceal their dealings. They tend to be new, listed at obscure residential addresses, and have few staff or assets. Their financial statements often don’t report the levels of turnover that the filings would imply.
According to public records, Silva was registered only last September. It reported zero revenues for 2022. A Google Street View search of its address in Ulan-Ude, the capital of Buryatia, takes visitors to a dilapidated apartment block.
POLITICO tried to contact Silva but the phone number given on its filings rang off the hook and a message sent to its email address bounced.
The sale of so-called dual-use technology that can have both civilian and military uses leaves enough deniability for Western authorities looking for reasons not to confront China | STR/AFP via Getty Images
Another Russian company called Rika declared a smaller shipment of body armor from Shanghai H Win in March. Before that, in January, Rika declared a consignment of helmets from a company called Deekon Shanghai, which shares an address with Shanghai H Win. The two companies are affiliated, another Shanghai H Win representative said.
A woman who answered the phone at Rika said: “We buy in Russia, not in China.” The company didn’t reply to a follow-up email from POLITICO.
The denial is hardly plausible: In addition to the protective gear, a search of declarations by Rika threw up hits for deals for thermal optical equipment from China. That was corroborated by customs data accessed by POLITICO, which revealed more than 220 shipments, worth $11 million, for thermal optics and protective equipment since the outbreak of the war. Rika advertises Chinese-made night sights right at the top of its website.
Another Russian company called Legittelekom, whose homepage reveals it to be a Moscow freight forwarding company, also appears as a buyer of 100,000 items of headgear and 100,000 suits of outerwear from Deekon Shanghai, according to filings dated last November 24.
A man who answered a call to Legittelekom declined to comment on POLITICO’s findings and would not say whether the company supplied the Russian military.
“This is a commercial activity and we do not disclose our commercial activities,” the man said in response to both questions.
Bigger deal
Then there’s Pozitron, a company based in Rostov-on-Don, the southern city briefly captured by warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner mercenaries in their failed uprising last month. It imported more than $60 million-worth of “airsoft helmets,” “miscellaneous ceramics,” and other items from Chinese firm Beijing KRNatural in November and December 2022, according to customs data shared by ImportGenius.
These flows check out with Pozitron’s own declarations of conformity between late October and December 2022, for a total of 100,000 helmets. The declarations also reveal that Pozitron acquired a range of drones from Chinese multinational SZ DJI Technology Co., Ltd last December.
Although the quantity is unclear, the models specified include ones known to have been used in the Ukrainian theater of war, like DJI’s Mavic 2 Enterprise Advanced quadcopter or the Mini 2 lightweight drone.
At first sight, the product descriptions in the declarations and customs records appear harmless enough — the “airsoft helmets,” for example, are said to be for use in paintball games and “not for military use, not for dual use.”
Sanctions and defense experts say, however, that it’s common practice to mislabel dual-use goods as being for civilian purposes when they’re in fact destined for the battlefield.
At any rate, Pozitron, which was only founded in March 2021, is having a very good war: Its revenues exploded from 31 million rubles — around $400,000 — in 2021 to 20 billion rubles — almost $300 million — in 2022, according to its financial statement.
Reached by email, Pozitron’s general director, Andrey Vitkovsky, said that his company has “never imported drones and similar products” from the People’s Republic of China.
“The main activity of Pozitron LLC is the purchase and sale of consumer goods, sporting goods, and fabrics, both produced in the Russian Federation and imported from China,” Vitkovsky added, saying that his company’s activities were “exclusively peaceful in nature, in compliance with all rules and restrictions.”
The denial is typical — Russian companies have good reason to fear Western sanctions if they are implicated in trade that supports the Kremlin’s war effort. After POLITICO reported in March that a company called Tekhkrim was importing Chinese assault weapons, and declaring them as “hunting rifles,” the firm was sanctioned by the United States.
Pozitron is on the West’s radar, said one sanctions expert, who was granted anonymity as they are not authorized to speak publicly.
As for Beijing KRNatural, POLITICO was able to trace a company with a similar name at the address given in the Pozitron filings. The company, Beijing Natural Hanhua International Trade Co., Ltd, is listed as a “small and micro enterprise.” It was founded in April 2022, a few months before the Pozitron deals. Nobody answered when POLITICO called.
Heavenly mechanics
In contrast to the bulk consignments of protective gear that appear intended to equip a large fighting force, the orders for drones found by POLITICO are more dispersed among different buyers — both companies and individuals.
In addition to Pozitron, buyers of drones from DJI and its subsidiaries include firms called Gigantshina and Vozdukh — neither of which responded to emailed requests for comment. Another is Nebesnaya Mekhanika (“Heavenly Mechanics”), which before the war was the Chinese company’s official distributor in Russia.
A DJI spokesperson said that the company and its subsidiaries had voluntarily stopped all shipments to, and operations in, Russia and Ukraine on April 26, 2022 — two months after the war broke out.
“We stand alone as the only drone company to clearly denounce and actively discourage use of products in combat,” the spokesperson said in comments emailed to POLITICO.
DJI said it had also broken off its relationship with Nebesnaya Mekhanika, although the Russian company filed further declarations for shipments of the Chinese company’s drones last September 15 and on March 27 of this year.
The spokesperson said that DJI was not in any way involved in the drafting of the declarations of conformity found by POLITICO: “These documents would have been filled out by Russian parties, and they do not indicate in any shape or form who ex- or imported the products that are being declared conform.”
“We have seen media reports and other documents that appear to show how our products are being transported to Russia and Ukraine from other countries where they can be bought off-the-shelf,” the spokesperson added. “However, it is not in our power to influence how our products are being used once they leave our control.”
Still, a search of ImportGenius shows that a Chinese company called Iflight has continued to ship DJI drones to Nebesnaya Mechnika via Hong Kong, care of a local company called Lotos. The most recent consignment was delivered last October 10. In an apparent anomaly, Russia is stated as the country of origin for the shipments.
Nebesnaya Mekhanika, which still advertises DJI drones on its website, did not respond to a request for comment.
Political will
The trafficking of low-tech body armor to high-tech drones and thermal optics highlights a vulnerability in the Western sanctions regime. The ambiguity surrounding the dual-use status of this equipment, coupled with the fact that a significant portion of it is manufactured in China, seems, at least for now, to have placed the possibility of the West taking meaningful action beyond reach.
Then there is the flow of technology through China that may include components made in the West that could be of direct military use.
Russia is fully aware of the China loophole and is using it to buy Western technology to fight its war against Ukraine, according to a recent analysis by the KSE Institute, a think tank affiliated to the Kyiv School of Economics. More than 60 percent of imported critical components in Russian weapons found on the battlefield came from U.S. companies, the researchers found.
It’s an issue that U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken brought up on a visit to Beijing last month — the first by Washington’s top diplomat in five years. He told reporters that China had given assurances that “it is not and will not provide lethal assistance to Russia for use in Ukraine.” Blinken, however, expressed “ongoing concerns” that Chinese firms may be providing technology that Russia can use to advance its aggression in Ukraine. “And we have asked the Chinese government to be very vigilant about that.”
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters that China had given assurances that “it is not and will not provide lethal assistance to Russia for use in Ukraine” during a visit to Beijing last month | Pool photo by Leah Millis/AFP via Getty Images
France is also concerned that China is delivering dual-use equipment to Russia. “There are indications that they are doing things we would prefer them not to do,” Emmanuel Bonne, President Emmanuel Macron’s top diplomatic adviser, told the recent Aspen Security Forum. Pressed on whether China was supplying weapons, Bonne said: “Well, kind of military equipment … as far as we know they are not delivering massively military capacities to Russia but (we need there to be) no delivery.”
Yet there’s little the West can do to twist Beijing’s arm into halting flows of dual-use products into Russia. Only the United States would have the real power to impose an outright ban on dollar-denominated transactions — as Washington did when it sanctioned Iran over its secret nuclear program.
The EU, however, lacks such a strong sanctions weapon because the euro is far less ubiquitous on global markets. It’s also been hesitant to act. In its latest package of Russia sanctions last month, the EU compiled a list of seven Chinese companies that shouldn’t be allowed to trade with the bloc. But, after lobbying by Beijing, Brussels dropped four companies from the blacklist.
Elina Ribakova, one of the authors of the KSE Institute report, said indirect shipments via China pose challenges in terms of both the scope and enforcement of Western sanctions. Secondary sanctions may not be sufficient, she said. She called for manufacturers to be forced to take responsibility for where their products end up — just as banks were required by regulators to step up customer oversight and anti-money laundering operations in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.
“What we can do differently is to create the same infrastructure for the corporates,” explained Ribakova, who is director of the international program at the Kyiv School of Economics. “We have to threaten them with serious fines.”
Maxim Mironov, a sanctions expert and assistant professor of finance at the IE Business School in Madrid, reckons that the West, despite expanding sanctions to punish Putin’s helpers, lacks the political conviction to enforce them against Beijing.
“Do politicians have enough will to put sanctions on China? Basically, the answer is no,” said Mironov.
“China signals: You can try, but I don’t care what you are trying to do,” Mironov added. “And the European Union is like: If you don’t like it, we are not going to do it. And if the Chinese see that, they are just going to continue doing what they think is in their best interest.”
The European Commission, the U.S. National Security Council and the Chinese Mission to the EU did not respond to requests for comment.
Stuart Lau contributed reporting.
[ad_2]
Sarah Anne Aarup, Sergey Panov and Douglas Busvine
This system, which has faced pushback from digital rights organizations and United Nations experts, will get its spotlight moment at the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics. In July next year, France will deploy large-scale, real-time, algorithm-supportedvideo surveillance cameras — a first in Europe. (Not included in the plan: facial recognition.)
Last month, the French parliament approved a controversial government plan to allow investigators to track suspected criminals in real-time via access to their devices’ geolocation, camera and microphone. Paris also lobbied in Brussels to be allowed to spy on reporters in the name of national security.
Helping France down the path of mass surveillance: a historically strong and centralized state; a powerful law enforcement community; political discourse increasingly focused on law and order; and the terrorist attacks of the 2010s. In the wake of President Emmanuel Macron’s agenda for so-called strategic autonomy, French defense and security giants, as well as innovative tech startups, have also gotten a boost to help them compete globally with American, Israeli and Chinese companies.
“Whenever there’s a security issue, the first reflex is surveillance and repression. There’s no attempt in either words or deeds to address it with a more social angle,” said Alouette, an activist at French digital rights NGO La Quadrature du Net who uses a pseudonym to protect her identity.
As surveillance and security laws have piled up in recent decades, advocates have lined up on opposite sides. Supporters argue law enforcement and intelligence agencies need such powers to fight terrorism and crime. Algorithmic video surveillance would have prevented the 2016 Nice terror attack, claimed Sacha Houlié, a prominent lawmaker from Macron’s Renaissance party.
Opponents point to the laws’ effect on civil liberties and fear France is morphing into a dystopian society. In June, the watchdog in charge of monitoring intelligence services said in a harsh report that French legislation is not compliant with the European Court of Human Rights’ case law, especially when it comes to intelligence-sharing between French and foreign agencies.
“We’re in a polarized debate with good guys and bad guys, where if you oppose mass surveillance, you’re on the bad guys’ side,” said Estelle Massé, Europe legislative manager and global data protection lead at digital rights NGO Access Now.
A history of surveillance
Both the 9/11 and the Paris 2015 terror attacks have accelerated mass surveillance in France, but the country’s tradition of snooping, monitoring and data collection dates way back — to Napoléon Bonaparte in the early 1800s.
“Historically, France has been at the forefront of these issues, in terms of police files and records. During the First Empire, France’s highly centralized government was determined to square the entire territory,” said Olivier Aïm, a lecturer at Sorbonne Université Celsa who authored a book on surveillance theories. Before electronic devices, paper was the main tool of control because identification documents were used to monitor travels, he explained.
The French emperor revived the Paris Police Prefecture — which exists to this day — and tasked law enforcement with new powers to keep political opponents in check.
In the 1880s, Alphonse Bertillon devised a method of identifying suspects and criminals using biometric features | Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images
In the 1880s, Alphonse Bertillon, who worked for the Paris Police Prefecture, introduced a new way of identifying suspects and criminals using biometric features — the forerunner of facial recognition. The Bertillon method would then be emulated across the world.
Between 1870 and 1940, under the Third Republic, the police kept a massive file — dubbed the National Security’s Central File — with information about 600,000 people, including anarchists and communists, certain foreigners, criminals, and people who requested identification documents.
After World War II ended, a bruised France moved away from hard-line security discourse until the 1970s. And in the early days of the 21st century, the 9/11 attacks in the United States marked a turning point, ushering in a steady stream of controversial surveillance laws — under both left- and right-wing governments. In the name of national security, lawmakers started giving intelligence services and law enforcement unprecedented powers to snoop on citizens, with limited judiciary oversight.
“Surveillance covers a history of security, a history of the police, a history of intelligence,” Aïm said. “Security issues have intensified with the fight against terrorism, the organization of major events and globalization.”
The rise of technology
In the 1970s, before the era of omnipresent smartphones, French public opinion initially pushed back against using technology to monitor citizens.
In 1974, as ministries started using computers, Le Monde revealed a plan to merge all citizens’ files into a single computerized database, a project known as SAFARI.
The project, abandoned amid the resulting scandal, led lawmakers to adopt robust data protection legislation — creating the country’s privacy regulator CNIL. France then became one of the few European countries with rules to protect civil liberties in the computer age.
However, the mass spread of technology — and more specifically video surveillance cameras in the 1990s — allowed politicians and local officials to come up with new, alluring promises: security in exchange for surveillance tech.
In 2020, there were about 90,000 video surveillance cameras powered by the police and the gendarmerie in France. The state helps local officials finance them via a dedicated public fund. After France’s violent riots in early July — which also saw Macron float social media bans during periods of unrest — Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin announced he would swiftly allocate €20 million to repair broken video surveillance devices.
In parallel, the rise of tech giants such as Google, Facebook and Apple in everyday life has led to so-called surveillance capitalism. And for French policymakers, U.S. tech giants’ data collection has over the years become an argument to explain why the state, too, should be allowed to gather people’s personal information.
“We give Californian startups our fingerprints, face identification, or access to our privacy from our living room via connected speakers, and we would refuse to let the state protect us in the public space?” Senator Stéphane Le Rudulier from the conservative Les Républicains said in June to justify the use of facial recognition on the street.
Strong state, strong statesmen
Resistance to mass surveillance does exist in France at the local level — especially against the development of so-called safe cities. Digital rights NGOs can boast a few wins: In the south of France, La Quadrature du Net scored a victory in an administrative court, blocking plans to test facial recognition in high schools.
Some grassroots movements have opposed surveillance schemes at the local level, but the nationwide legislative push has continued | Ludovic Marin/AFP via Getty Images
At the national level, however, security laws are too powerful a force, despite a few ongoing cases before the European Court of Human Rights. For example, France has de facto ignored multiple rulings from the EU top court that deemed mass data retention illegal.
Often at the center of France’s push for more state surveillance: the interior minister. This influential office, whose constituency includes the law enforcement and intelligence community, is described as a “stepping stone” toward the premiership — or even the presidency.
“Interior ministers are often powerful, well-known and hyper-present in the media. Each new minister pushes for new reforms, new powers, leading to the construction of a never-ending security tower,” said Access Now’s Massé.
Under Socialist François Hollande, Manuel Valls and Bernard Cazeneuve both went from interior minister to prime minister in, respectively, 2014 and 2016. Nicolas Sarkozy, Jacques Chirac’s interior minister from 2005 to 2007, was then elected president. All shepherded new surveillance laws under their tenure.
In the past year, Darmanin has been instrumental in pushing for the use of police drones, even going against the CNIL.
For politicians, even at the local level, there is little to gain electorally by arguing against expanded snooping and the monitoring of public space. “Many on the left, especially in complicated cities, feel obliged to go along, fearing accusations of being soft [on crime],” said Noémie Levain, a legal and political analyst at La Quadrature du Net. “The political cost of reversing a security law is too high,” she added.
It’s also the case that there’s often little pushback from the public. In March,on the same day a handful of French MPs voted to allow AI-powered video surveillance cameras at the 2024 Paris Olympics, about 1 million people took to the streets to protest against … Macron’s pension reform.
Sovereign cameras
For politicians, France’s industrial competitiveness is also at stake. The country is home to defense giants that dabble in both the military and civilian sectors, such as Thalès and Safran. Meanwhile, Idemia specializes in biometrics and identification.
“What’s accelerating legislation is also a global industrial and geopolitical context: Surveillance technologies are a Trojan horse for artificial intelligence,” said Caroline Lequesne Rot, an associate professor at the Côte d’Azur University, adding that French policymakers are worried about foreign rivals. “Europe is caught between the stranglehold of China and the U.S. The idea is to give our companies access to markets and allow them to train.”
In 2019, then-Digital Minister Cédric O told Le Monde that experimenting with facial recognition was needed to allow French companies to improve their technology.
France’s surveillance apparatus will be on full display at the 2024 Olympic Games | Patrick Kovarik/AFP via Getty Images
For the video surveillance industry — which made €1.6 billion in France in 2020 — the 2024 Paris Olympics will be a golden opportunity to test their products and services and showcase what they can do in terms of AI-powered surveillance.
XXII — an AI startup with funding from the armed forces ministry and at least some political backing — has already hinted it would be ready to secure the mega sports event.
“If we don’t encourage the development of French and European solutions, we run the risk of later becoming dependent on software developed by foreign powers,” wrote lawmakers Philippe Latombe, from Macron’s allied party Modem, and Philippe Gosselin, from Les Républicains, in a parliamentary report on video surveillance released in April.
“When it comes to artificial intelligence, losing control means undermining our sovereignty,” they added.
KYIV, Ukraine — Russian authorities accused Ukraine of launching a drone attack on Moscow early Monday that saw one of the aircraft fall near the Defense Ministry’s main headquarters and striking Crimea, while the Russian military unleashed new strikes on port infrastructure in southern Ukraine.
Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said there were no casualties when the drones struck two nonresidential buildings. The Defense Ministry claimed that the military jammed both attacking drones, forcing them to crash.
Russian media reported that one of the drones fell on the Komsomolsky highway near Moscow’s center, shattering shop windows and damaged the roof of a house just about 200 meters (just over 200 yards) away from the towering riverside Defense Ministry building. The ministry’s main headquarters has Pantsyr air defense systems placed on the roof.
It wasn’t immediately clear whether the drone targeted the Defense Ministry’s headquarters, which is located 2.7 kilometers (1.7 miles) away from the Kremlin, or was heading to some other target in central Moscow.
Another drone hit an office building in southern Moscow, gutting several upper floors — more visible damage compared to earlier drone strikes on the Russian capital.
Emergency workers were inspecting the damage and traffic was halted on sections of highways where the drones fell.
Ukrainian authorities didn’t immediately claim responsibility for the strike, which was the second drone attack on the Russian capital this month.
In the previous attack on July 4, the Russian military said four of the five drones were downed by air defenses on the outskirts of Moscow and the fifth was jammed by electronic warfare means and forced down. The raid prompted authorities to temporarily restrict flights at Moscow’s Vnukovo airport and divert flights to two other Moscow airports.
Russian authorities said that another Ukrainian drone attack early Monday struck an ammunition depot in northern Crimea and forced a halt in traffic on a major highway and a railway crossing the Black Sea peninsula that was illegally annexed by Moscow in 2014. Railway traffic was restored several hours later.
The Moscow-appointed head of Crimea, Sergei Aksyonov, said that authorities also ordered the evacuation of several villages within a five-kilometer (three-mile) radius of the depot that was hit.
Aksyonov said the military shot down or jammed 11 attacking drones, while the Defense Ministry claimed later that 11 of the 17 attacking drones were jammed and crashed into the Black Sea and another three were shot down.
Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s digital transformation minister, noted on his messaging app channel that Monday’s drone attacks on Moscow and Crimea signaled that Russia’s electronic warfare means and air defenses are “less and less able to protect the skies of the invaders,” adding that “there will be more of it.”
Ukrainska Pravda reported that the drone attack on Moscow was a special operation by Ukrainian military intelligence.
On Saturday, a previous drone attack on Crimea hit another ammunition depot, sending huge plumes of black smoke skyward and also forcing the evacuation of residents,
Russian forces, meanwhile, struck port infrastructure on the Danube River in southern Ukraine with exploding drones early Monday, wounding four workers and destroying a grain hangar and storage for other cargo, the Ukrainian military said. It said that Ukrainian forces downed three of the attacking drones.
The strike was the latest in a barrage of attacks that has damaged critical port infrastructure in southern Ukraine in the past week. The Kremlin has described the strikes as retribution for last week’s Ukrainian strike on the crucial Kerch Bridge linking Russia with Crimea.
Speaking at the Aspen Security Forum via video link over the weekend, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the bridge a legitimate target for Ukraine, noting that Russia has used it to ferry military supplies and it must be “neutralized.”
Since Moscow canceled a landmark grain deal a week ago amid Kyiv’s grinding efforts to retake its occupied territories, Russia has launched repeated attacks on Odesa, a key hub for exporting grain.
On Sunday, at least one person was killed and 22 others wounded in an attack on Odesa that severely damaged 25 landmarks across the city, including the Transfiguration Cathedral.
UNESCO strongly condemned the attack on the cathedral and other heritage sites and said it will send a mission in coming days to assess damage. Odesa’s historic center was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site earlier this year, and the agency said the Russian attacks contradict Moscow’s pledge to take precautions to spare World Heritage sites in Ukraine.
The Russian military denied that it targeted the Transfiguration Cathedral, claiming without offering evidence that it was likely struck by a Ukrainian air defense missile.
___
Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine: https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
Poland’s Defense Ministry says a U.S. military drone crashed in the woods in the southwest of the country after contact was lost during training
WARSAW, Poland — A U.S. military drone has crashed in the woods in southwestern Poland after contact was lost during training, Poland’s Defense Ministry said Friday.
The ministry said that no one was hurt and there was no damage from the incident on Thursday afternoon.
Polish media reported that an eyewitness saw an object crashing in the woods near the village of Trzebien and notified the fire brigade. The military were already there when the firefighters arrived, Piotr Pilarczyk, spokesman for the national fire command told Polish state news agency PAP.
Pilarczyk said there were no explosions when the object, which had a wing span of about 8 meters (26 feet), crashed.
In an email, the ministry told The Associated Press that the drone had collected by the U.S. side.
Poland’s defense is on alert as neighboring Ukraine is fighting an all-out war against Russia’s military aggression. Trainers from several NATO member countries, including the UK, Canada, and Norway have been working with Ukrainian forces in Poland.
About 10,500 U.S. troops are stationed at various locations in Poland.
Two Polish men died in November when a missile fired by Ukraine air defense strayed into eastern Poland. Another stray missile violated Poland’s airspace in December and was found in the woods in April.
