Russia today finalized preparations to celebrate Victory Day over Nazi Germany this Tuesday amid strict security measures, especially next to Red Square, in the face of possible acts of Ukrainian sabotage, while redoubling its drone attacks against Ukraine, where the fighting does not abate.
For the first time in many years, the scene of the traditional military parade to celebrate the Victory, which in Russia is celebrated on May 9 and not May 8 due to the time difference, has been closed tightly for two weeks, something which did not occur even when the parades were attended by world-class leaders. The members of the Police and the National Guard were placed on permanent guard and their commanders canceled all the permits and vacations of the personnel.
The extraordinary security measures were adopted on April 26, long before last Wednesday two drones exploded next to the dome of the Kremlin Senate Palace, an attack of which Russia did not hesitate to accuse Ukraine and whose images shocked the country. In the previous days, the Russian authorities had reported the sighting and crash of supposedly Ukrainian drones around Moscow.
In early April, Ukrainian businessman Volodymyr Yatsenko offered a reward of 20 million hryvnia, more than $500,000, to the team that can land a drone on Red Square on May 9. After the drone incident in the Kremlin, Moscow, Saint Petersburg and, later, more than half of the country's regions banned the flights of these devices.
Among the proposals to redouble the defense of important infrastructures such as the Kremlin, Alexei Zhuravliov, vice president of the Defense Committee of the Russian Duma or Chamber of Deputies, stood out for its curiousity, who suggested creating "interceptor eagle squadrons" to combat the drones.
As established in the protocol, Russian President Vladimir Putin will preside over the military parade and deliver a speech from the Red Square rostrum, where he will be accompanied by the leaders of six former Soviet republics: Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Armenia and Belarus. Putin today sent a congratulatory message to the heads of state of Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Abkhazia and South Ossetia and "to the peoples of Georgia and Moldova".
For security reasons, military parades were suspended in more than twenty Russian cities, as well as in the border regions with Ukraine and in the annexed Crimean peninsula.
This morning at least five people were injured in kyiv due to an attack by falling fragments of drones. "In the airspace of kyiv, more than 30 enemy drones were detected and destroyed," the head of the military administration of the Ukrainian capital, Serhyi Popko, wrote on Telegram.
The command of the Ukrainian Air Force reported at the same time that the anti-aircraft defense shot down three Russian drones in the Kherson region, in the south of the country. According to the General Staff of the Ukrainian Army, the Russian ground forces are concentrating their main efforts on the fronts in the Donetsk region, in particular next to the Liman, Avdiika, Bakhmut and Mariinka fronts. "Hard fighting is taking place in Bakhmut and Mariinka," summarized the military report
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