MOSCOW, July 27: Russia has scaled down the annual Navy Day celebrations in St Petersburg, Kaliningrad, and Vladivostok due to security concerns over Ukrainian drone attacks. The Russian Defence Ministry reported that 99 Ukrainian drones were downed overnight, with more being shot down near St Petersburg. A woman was injured by drone fragments in the Lomonosov region. St Petersburg’s Pulkovo airport suspended dozens of flights early Sunday due to the drone threat.
President Vladimir Putin visited the Admiralty building in St Petersburg to receive reports on four-day naval maneuvers that wrapped up the July Storm exercise. He vowed to build more warships and intensify the navy’s training, adding that “the navy’s strike power and combat capability will rise to a qualitatively new level.” He also visited the Admiral Grigorovich frigate of the Baltic Fleet at the Kronstadt naval base to hail its crew for fending off a Ukrainian drone attack earlier in the day.
Reducing the scale of the Navy Day celebrations reflects Moscow’s worries about Ukraine’s sweeping drone attacks across the country. In a series of strikes earlier in the war, Ukraine sank several Russian warships in the Black Sea, crippling Moscow’s naval capability and forcing it to redeploy its fleet from Russia-occupied Crimea to Novorossiysk. In an audacious June 1 attack codenamed “Spiderweb,” Ukraine used drones to hit several Russian airbases hosting long-range bombers across Russia, taking the Russian military by surprise. (AP)
