By The Associated Press
All four international airports around Moscow temporarily suspended flights Tuesday as Russian forces intercepted more than 100 Ukrainian drones fired at almost a dozen Russian regions, the Defense Ministry in Moscow said.
Nine other regional Russian airports also temporarily stopped operating as drones struck areas along the border with Ukraine and deeper inside Russia, according to Russia’s civil aviation agency, Rosaviatsia, and the Defense Ministry. The Moscow region was later attacked for a second time, with the capital’s major airports of Vnukovo and Domodedovo forced to ground flights again, while the city’s air defenses intercepted three drones, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said.
The drone assaults threatened a planned unilateral 72-hour ceasefire in the more than three-year war announced by President Vladimir Putin to coincide with celebrations in Moscow marking Victory Day in World War II.
The day celebrating Moscow’s defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945 is Russia’s biggest secular holiday. Chinese President Xi Jinping, Brazilian leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and others will gather in the Russian capital on Thursday for the 80th anniversary and watch a parade featuring thousands of troops accompanied by tanks and missiles.
Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry urged foreign countries not to send military representatives to take part in the parade, as some have in the past. None is officially confirmed for this year’s event.
Ukraine will regard the participation of foreign military personnel as “an affront to the memory of the victory over Nazism, to the memory of millions of Ukrainian front-line soldiers who liberated our country and all of Europe from Nazism eight decades ago,” a statement on the ministry’s website said.
Security is expected to be tight. Russian officials have warned that internet access could be restricted in Moscow during the celebrations and have told residents not to set off fireworks.
Putin last week declared the brief unilateral truce “on humanitarian grounds” from May 8. Ukraine has demanded a longer ceasefire.
Russia has effectively rejected a U.S. proposal for an immediate and full 30-day halt in the fighting by insisting on far-reaching conditions. Ukraine has accepted that proposal, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says.
U.S. President Donald Trump said Monday that the brief truce “doesn’t sound like much, but it’s … a lot if you knew where we started from.”
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Tuesday that ceasefire orders had been issued to Russian troops, but soldiers would retaliate if fired upon.
Meanwhile, Ukraine and Russia swapped hundreds of captured soldiers in one of the largest exchanges since Moscow’s full-scale invasion started in February 2022. The last exchange was on April 19.
Zelenskyy and Russia’s Defense Ministry said they each received 205 soldiers in the swap. Both sides said the United Arab Emirates had mediated the exchange, as on previous occasions.
The long-range strikes by both sides continued, however. Ukraine has used increasingly sophisticated, domestically produced drones to compensate for having a smaller army than Russia along the roughly 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) front line, and to take the war onto Russian soil with long-range strikes.
Russia has used Shahed drones as well as 3,000-pound (1,300-kilogram) glide bombs, artillery and cruise and ballistic missiles against Ukraine.
Two people were injured in Russia’s Kursk region, according to local Gov. Alexander Khinshtein, and some damage was reported in the Voronezh region.
The Russian reports couldn’t be independently verified.
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Russian forces fired at least 20 Shahed drones at Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city near the border with Russia, injuring four people, regional Gov. Oleh Syniehubov wrote on Telegram.
The drones started a fire at the biggest market in Kharkiv, Barabashovo, destroying and damaging around 100 market stalls, he said.
Seven civilians were hurt elsewhere in the Kharkiv region by Russian glide bombs and drones, Syniehubov said.
Three people were also killed when a Russian ballistic missile hit the Ukrainian city of Sumy Tuesday evening, acting Mayor Artem Kobzar said. One woman died at the scene, while two more people died due to injuries at a hospital, he said.
In Kramatorsk, in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, Russian Shahed drones killed one person and injured two others, Mayor Oleksandr Honcharenko wrote on Facebook. The drones targeted residential and industrial areas of the city, he said.
In the Odesa region, Russian drones struck residential buildings and civilian infrastructure, killing one person, regional head Oleh Kiper wrote on Telegram.
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