Ukraine war live: Drones targeting Moscow shot down as Putin ramps up border defence

Russian air defence systems shot down two drones heading towards Moscow for a second day straight, officials have said.

The attack disrupted flights at two international airports, with one drone downed in the Kaluga region south-west of Moscow and another near a major Moscow ring road, Moscow mayor Sergey Sobyanin and the Russian Defence Ministry stated. Officials have blamed the attack on Ukraine.

Domodedovo airport, south of the city, halted flights for more than two hours and Vnukovo airport, south-west of the city, stopped flights for more than two-and-a-half hours, according to Russian news outlets.

The news comes just one day after Russian president Vladimir Putin pledged to ramp up border defences following a surge in drone attacks.

Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said NATO-member Poland had already announced plans to strengthen its military, and he expected significant NATO forces and weaponry to be deployed in Finland, which has just joined the U.S.-led Western alliance.

On Wednesday, Russia claimed it shot down two Ukrainian drones headed for Moscow, one near a major airport to the south of the city and one to the west of the capital.

Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin said while one drone was shot down near Domodedovo, where one of Russia’s biggest international airports is located. Another was downed near the Minsk motorway.

Kyiv has never claimed responsibility for attacks inside Russian territory.

The Kremlin’s fear of a serious tech brain drain is the main factor preventing Moscow from nationalising Nasdaq-listed Yandex, often dubbed “Russia’s Google”, four people with knowledge of the company’s divestment plans told Reuters.

Yandex’s fate has been the subject of much speculation since it announced plans to pursue a corporate restructuring last November, a move that should ultimately see its main revenue-generating businesses inside Russia spun off from its Dutch-registered parent company.

As Russia’s leading tech company, boasting some of the country’s top developers among more than 20,000 staff, Yandex was one of the few Russian firms with genuine global ambitions before Moscow unleashed its war in Ukraine in February 2022.

Many of its staff have moved abroad, some relocating to Serbia, where its new offices are filling up quickly. Maksut Shadaev, the head of Russia’s ministry of digital affairs, told parliament in December that around 100,000 IT specialists had left Russia in 2022.

And at a company where staff know-how is crucial to maintaining a leading position in search technology, advertising and ride-hailing, a hostile takeover by the state that sparks a talent exodus could do serious damage, according to the sources.

“It’s obvious that if (nationalisation) happens, the company will gradually come to nothing,” said one of the people with knowledge of the talks. “And this is probably what is stopping tough action from being taken.”

The Kremlin did not respond to a request for comment. Yandex declined to comment. In a results filing late last month the company said its plans for the potential corporate restructuring were “progressing”.

Moscow has previous form. It seized assets in the Sakhalin oil and gas projects last year by presidential decree and has taken the Russian assets of four Western firms under “temporary control” in 2023, including handing the running of French food group Danone’s Russian subsidiary to the nephew of Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov.

Yandex co-founder Arkady Volozh, in a statement on Thursday criticising what he described as Russia’s “barbaric” invasion, said he had been focused on extricating “talented Russian engineers” from the country since the war started.

“These people are now out, and in a position to start something new, continuing to drive technological innovation,” he said. “They will be a tremendous asset to the countries in which they land.”

It is not yet clear whether Volozh’s comments may have any bearing on how Russia decides to proceed with the company.

Ukrainian forces broke through Russia’s defensive lines after launching a surprise raid across the Dnipro River.

The river divides liberated Ukrainian territory on one bank and Russian-occupied land on the other, and for months it has served as part of the front line in southern Ukraine.

Russian military bloggers said that up to seven boats, each carrying up to six troops, arrived on the Russian-occupied bank, apparently under the cover of darkness, and advanced 800m. Blogger Trinadtsatyi, posting on the Telegram messaging app to more than 150,000 followers, said a number of Russian soldiers were allegedly killed or taken captive during the raid. Images circulating on social media appeared to show captured soldiers.

The Polish government announced Wednesday that it is planning to deploy an additional 2,000 troops to its border with Belarus, twice the number the Border Guard agency had requested, as fears of illegal migration rise.

In an interview with state news agency PAP, a deputy interior minister, Maciej Wasik announced the decision and accused the Belarusian authorities of organizing illegal migration.

He said migration pressure on the Polish-Belarusian border area is growing, although it cannot compare to the situation two years ago.

Russia made its final preparations on Thursday for the launch of its first lunar landing spacecraft in 47 years as it races to be the first power to make a soft landing on the south pole of the moon which may hold significant deposits of water ice.

For centuries, astronomers have wondered about water on the moon, which is 100 times drier than the Sahara. NASA maps in 2018 showed water ice in the shadowed parts of the moon and in 2020 NASA confirmed water exists on the sunlight areas.

A Soyuz 2.1v rocket carrying the Luna-25 craft will blast off from the Vostochny cosmodrome, 3,450 miles (5,550 km) east of Moscow, on Friday at 0211 Moscow time and is due to touch down on the moon on Aug. 23, Russia’s space agency said.

The Russian lunar mission, the first since 1976, is racing against India which sent up its Chandrayaan-3 lunar lander last month and more broadly with the United States and China which both have advanced lunar exploration programmes.

“The last one was in 1976 so there’s a lot riding on this,” Asif Siddiqi, professor of history at Fordham University, told Reuters.

“Russia’s aspirations towards the moon are mixed up in a lot of different things. I think first and foremost, it’s an expression of national power on the global stage.”

U.S. astronaut Neil Armstrong gained renown in 1969 for being the first person to walk on the moon but it was the Soviet Union’s Luna-2 mission which was the first spacecraft to reach the moon’s surface in 1959 and the Luna-9 mission in 1966 was the first to do a soft landing on the moon.

But Moscow then focused on exploring Mars and since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union, Russia has failed to send probes beyond the earth’s orbit. There is much riding on the Luna-25 mission – especially as the Kremlin says the West’s sanctions over the Ukraine war have failed to cripple the Russian economy.

“Let me put it this way: If Russia prevailed and the Indian probe succeeded, it would really be something,” Saddiqi said, pointing to the deterioration of Russia’s space programmes over the recent decades.

Ukraine’s First Lady Olena Zelenska has repeatedly said that one of the most unexpected outcomes for Moscow after invading Ukraine is that “soft power fought back”.

I hadn’t quite appreciated what she meant until I interviewed her from the heart of Kyiv. There I learned first-hand how soft diplomacy can have an instant impact on the world stage.

Sitting in the bunker-like command centre in Kyiv, Mrs Zelenska was clear that one of the keys to ending this war was ending sanctions dodging by countries trading with Moscow through third nations.

Russian president Vladimir Putin is considering attending the G20 summit in person, a Kremlin source has claimed.

The summit is set to take place in September in New Delhi, India, focusing on the theme “One Earth, One Family, One Future.”

But Putin hasn’t ruled out his attendance, the Kremlin official told NBC News.

As world leaders condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Putin did not participate in the event in Bali in 2022.

Twelve people were missing on Thursday, a day after a blast at the site of an optical electronics factory 50 km (30 miles) northeast of Moscow killed one person and injured more than 60.

Investigators say pyrotechnic equipment was being stored in the rented warehouse on the grounds of the Zagorsk Optical and Mechanical Plant where the blast occurred. At least 30 people were admitted to hospital, including six to intensive care.

The factory produces optical equipment for industrial and healthcare applications as well as for the Russian security forces.

Olga Vradiy, of the Moscow region branch of the federal Investigative Committee, said the technical director of Pyro-Ross, a now-bankrupt pyrotechnics firm, had been detained on suspicion of violating safety regulations, the Interfax news agency reported.

Vradiy also said the number of those listed as missing had risen to 12.

Around 38 apartment blocks in the surrounding area were damaged by the explosion, mostly with broken windows, along with two schools, a sports complex and a store, the governor of the Moscow region said on Wednesday.

The TASS news agency quoted emergency services as dismissing early reports that the blast could have been caused by a drone attack, many of which have taken place in Moscow and the surrounding area in recent weeks and months, attributed by Russia to Ukraine.

Ukraine‘s navy said a new temporary Black Sea “humanitarian corridor” had started working on Thursday and that the first ships were expected to use it within days.

Oleh Chalyk, a spokesperson for the Ukrainian navy, told Reuters that the corridor would be used by commercial ships blocked at Ukraine‘s Black Sea ports and for grain and agricultural products.

“Today a new temporary humanitarian corridor has started to work,” Chalyk said by phone.

“The corridor will be very transparent, we will put cameras on the ships and there will be a broadcast to show that this is purely a humanitarian mission and has no military purpose,” he said.

The navy said in a separate statement that the risk posed by mines in the Black Sea and the military threat from Russia remained.

Residents “receiving humanitarian aid” have come under fire in a Russian shelling attack, a Ukrainian official has said.

At least six were hospitalised with their injuries following a strike on Bilozerka in the southern Kherson region.

“The Russian army shelled Bilozerka with artillery. Six people were injured. Residents who were receiving humanitarian aid at that time came under fire,” local governor Oleksandr Prokudin wrote on Telegram.