Tag: Russia-Ukraine conflict

Russia-Ukraine War: How Russia and the World Navigate Two Years of Conflict

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Two years on, where does the Ukraine war stand?

Russia’s war in Ukraine has entered its third year. What many thought on February 24, 2022 would be a swift Russian military operation against its smaller neighbour has turned out to be the largest land war in Europe since the end of the Second World War. This is no longer about Russia and Ukraine. This is now a proxy conflict between Russia and NATO, a trans-Atlantic nuclear alliance. Two years since the war began, where does it stand today, and how it’s transforming Russia and the world?

If one looks back at the beginning of the war, it’s not difficult to see that President Vladimir Putin made a grave strategic miscalculation when he ordered the invasion of Europe’s second largest country with less than 2,00,000 troops. Mr. Putin probably expected a quick victory, like he did in Georgia in 2008 and Crimea in 2014. But that did not happen.

In 2022, Russians were forced to retreat from Kharkiv and Kherson. The West doubled down on its military and economic support for Ukraine. Russia had declared “demilitarisation” and “denazification” of Ukraine as their objectives. Ukraine wanted to push back the invading troops and recapture the lost territories, including Crimea. The West wanted to use Ukrainian forces to bleed out Russian troops and weaken Russia as a great power. The wheels of war were grinding on. Who is meeting their objectives today?

Ukraine last year launched an ambitious counteroffensive with advances weapons from the West. Their plan was to make swift advances into Russia’s line of defence in the south and destroy Mr. Putin’s land bridge that connects the Donbas with Crimea.

Eight months after counteroffensive began, it’s now evident that the campaign has failed. Gen. Velery Zaluzhnyi, Ukraine’s former commander in chief who was fired by President Zelensky, had called for a mass mobilisation, suggesting that Ukraine was facing acute shortage of fighters on the frontline. They lost many of their West-supplied weapons in the counteroffensive and are waiting for fresh supplies. Ukraine is almost entirely dependent on the West for critical supplies, but aid from the U.S., the single largest supporter of Ukraine, is stuck in Congress amid growing Republican opposition.

On the other side, the Russians are on the offensive. In December, Russia claimed its first victory since the capture of Bakhmut in May when it seized Maryinka. Earlier this month, Ukraine was forced to abandon Avdiivka, a strategically important town in Donetsk. The Russians are now advancing westward in Donetsk and piling up pressure on Ukrainian forces in Krynky, Kherson, in the south.

The message from the battlefield is alarming for Ukraine and its partners in the West.

Editorial |Endless war: On the Russia-Ukraine war

Take a look at the West’s strategy. The West, or NATO to be specific, had taken a two-fold approach towards Ukraine. One was to provide economic and military assistance to Kyiv to keep the fight against Russia going on; and the second leg was to weaken Russia’s economy and war machine through sanctions. With Ukraine’s failed counteroffensive and a changing political climate in Washington with the prospect of a second Trump presidency looming, the first pillar of this policy faces uncertainty, if not absolute peril. The second pillar, sanctions, has hurt Russia badly. Western officials believe that sanctions have deprived Russia of over $430 billion in revenue it would otherwise have gained since the war began. Europe has also curtailed its energy purchases from Russia. Sanctions have also made it difficult for Moscow to acquire critical technologies, including microchips, which are necessary for its defence industry.

But this is not the whole story.

Russia has found several ways to work around sanctions and keep its economy going. When Europe cut energy sales, Russia offered discounted crude oil to big growing economies such as China, India and Brazil. It amassed a ghost fleet of ships to keep sending oil to its new markets without relying on western shipping companies and insurers. It set up shell companies and private corporations operating in its neighbourhood (say Armenia or Turkey) to import dual use technologies which were re-exported to Russia to be used in defence production. China, the world’s second largest economy, ramped up its financial and trade ties with Russia, including the export of dual use technologies. Russia moved away from the dollar to other currencies, mainly the Chinese yuan, for trade, and boosted defence and public spending at home (its defence budget was raised by nearly 70% this year).

Does it mean that everything is going well for Mr. Putin? No it doesn’t.

Since the war began, two countries in its neighbourhood, Sweden and Finland, have joined NATO, expanding the alliance’s border with Russia. Now, if you look at the Baltic Sea, all basin countries, except Russia, are practically NATO members, which makes it look like a NATO lake.

Mr. Putin spent years, after coming to power, to build strong economic ties with Europe, which are now in tatters. Russia’s hold on its immediate neighbourhood is also loosening, which was evident in tensions with Armenia and the latter’s decision to freeze participation in the Moscow-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). Russia is also increasingly becoming dependent on China, even though the Kremlin is careful not to upset the sensitivity of New Delhi.

But how does India look at the war?

India’s ties with Russia have multi-dimensions. While the energy aspect of this partnership, which flourished after the war, is seen largely opportunistic, the defence side is structural. India also sees Russia, a Eurasian powerhouse, as an important long-term strategic partner in tackling its continental challenges. But the elephant in the room was China.

Russia’s deepening ties with China triggered different arguments on India’s choices. One section argued that the growing synergy between Russia and China should serve as a wake-up call for India to revisit its Russia policy. Others, including yours truly, argued that India would be wary of pushing Russia deeper into China’s embrace by toeing the anti-Russian Western line.

External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar explained India’s thinking on this matter at the Raisina Dialogue recently. The world must give Russia more options, rather than “closing doors” on it and pushing it towards a closer embrace with China, Mr. Jaishankar said. The Minister’s comments underscored India’s concerns about a deepening China-Russia partnership, but his policy prescriptions were nuanced. “What’s happened today with Russia is essentially a lot of doors have been shut to Russia in the West,” he said. “We know the reasons why Russia is turning to parts of the world which are not West. Now, I think it makes sense to give Russia multiple options.”

Meaning, India’s ties with Russia are here to stay and expand, irrespective of what its western partners think of Moscow.

Script and presentation: Stanly Johny

Production: Richard Kujur

Video: Thamodharan B.

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Armed rebellion by Wagner chief Prigozhin underscores erosion of Russian legal system

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Russia’s rebellious mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin walked free from prosecution for his June 24 armed mutiny, and it’s still unclear if anyone will face any charges in the aborted uprising against military leaders or for the deaths of the soldiers killed in it.

Instead, a campaign is underway to portray the founder of the Wagner Group military contractor as driven by greed, with only hints of an investigation into whether he mishandled any of the billions of dollars in state funds.

Until last week, the Kremlin has never admitted to funding the company, with private mercenary groups technically illegal in Russia. But President Vladimir Putin revealed the state paid Wagner almost $1 billion in just one year, while Mr. Prigozhin’s other company earned about the same from government contracts. Mr. Putin wondered aloud whether any of it was stolen.

Also Read | Explained: Understanding the Wagner mutiny

The developments around Mr. Prigozhin, who remains unpunished despite Mr. Putin’s labelling of his revolt as treason, underscored what St. Petersburg municipal council member Nikita Yuferev called the “gradual erosion of the legal system” in Russia.

Andrei Kolesnikov, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, writing about the mutiny in a column, concluded: “The fabric of the state is disintegrating.”

After Putin indicated the government would probe financial irregularities by Mr. Prigozhin’s companies, state TV picked up that cue.

Commentator Dmitry Kiselyov said Wagner and another company owned by Prigozhin earned over 1.7 trillion rubles ($18.7 billion) through government contracts. Russian business daily Vedomosti cited a source close to the Defence Ministry as saying the earnings occurred between 2014 and 2023, years when both Prigozhin and Russian officials denied any ties to Wagner or even its existence.

“Big money made Prigozhin’s head spin,” Mr. Kiselyov said Sunday, saying the private army’s battlefield successes gave the mercenary boss “a feeling of impunity.”

One possible reason for Mr. Prigozhin’s mutiny, he said, was the Defence Ministry’s refusal to extend a multibillion-dollar contract with his legal catering company, Concord, to supply food to the army.

According to Mr. Kiselyov, Wagner earned 858 billion rubles from government contracts, while Concord earned another 845 billion. Those numbers were 10 times higher than what Putin gave last week.

Also unclear is whether Mr. Prigozhin will move to Belarus, Moscow’s closest ally, under a deal with the Kremlin to end the rebellion. Belarus’ authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko said Thursday that Prigozhin was in Russia. The Kremlin refused comment.

Russian media on Wednesday — including popular state TV channel Russia 1 — showed video of searches of Mr. Prigozhin’s St. Petersburg offices and an opulent mansion he purportedly owned, complete with helipad and indoor swimming pool. They also showed a van with boxes of cash, as well as gold bars, wigs and weapons in the estate.

Russia 1 programs also alleged Mr. Prigozhin’s adult children amassed significant wealth through him and said the searches were a part of an ongoing investigation, contrasting his lifestyle to his anti-elite image.

“So it turns out, Yevgeny Prigozhin didn’t have enough and wanted more?” an anchor mused.

The goal of these revelations is “to smear the person, show he is an oligarch,” said Ilya Shumanov, Russia director for Transparency International, noting Mr. Prigozhin often made crude and plain-spoken attacks on the military leadership.

“And here they say that he’s a billionaire, and all this (money) isn’t his, it’s from the (state) budget, and he was sitting on it, and there would have been no private military company with the Defence Ministry,” Shumanov told The Associated Press.

The revelations raised questions of how the government could fund Wagner at all, given that laws prohibit mercenary activities, including funding and training private troops, that put the company in a legal gray area.

Until the rebellion, Putin always denied any link between the state and Mr. Prigozhin’s mercenaries. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said as recently as 2020 that “there is no such thing as a private military company in Russian law,” and that he wasn’t aware of one.

By then, however, Wagner had sent its soldiers-for-hire to Syria and African countries as Russia expanded its global influence. By Mr. Prigozhin’s own admission, his forces also operated in eastern Ukraine to support a separatist uprising and later fought there after the 2022 invasion.

Asked Monday about the legality of state funding for Wagner, Peskov refused comment.

Shumanov told AP that Wagner was likely funded either with cash through shell companies, or through government contracts via Mr. Prigozhin’s other entities. How much is impossible to know, he noted, but added it was clear Mr. Putin’s remarks “gave a green light” to investigate the Wagner chief’s finances.

“I’d wait several weeks, and I think there will definitely be a reaction from the security forces in terms of Mr. Prigozhin and his economic activities,” he said.

The Kremlin’s message is that “we are dealing with a thief, a corrupt person, a thief and an oligarch, who went too far and stole money from the budget,” Shumanov said: “This is a very clear explanation, and no one needs to be sacrificed except for Prigozhin.”

Besides the finances, there is the matter of whether anyone will face prosecution for the deaths of the Russian troops who died at the hands of Mr. Prigozhin’s fighters.

Russian media reported about 15 military troops were killed during the rebellion as thousands of his soldiers seized a military headquarters in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don, then headed for Moscow, shooting down military helicopters and other aircraft on what Prigozhin called his “march of justice.” At a June 27 Kremlin ceremony, Mr. Putin held a minute of silence to honor the dead, although he didn’t say how many were killed.

A deal struck with Mr. Prigozhin to end the uprising stipulated that the Federal Security Service, or FSB, would drop charges against him and his fighters of mounting a rebellion. That agreement went against Putin’s vow in a nationally televised address during the uprising to punish those behind it.

Instead, the Kremlin said Mr. Prigozhin agreed to end the mutiny and go to Belarus — a settlement that didn’t sit well with some.

Yuferev, the St. Petersburg municipal council member, filed a request with the Prosecutor General’s Office and the FSB, asking who would be punished for the rebellion.

Thousands of people “rolling toward Moscow on tanks shoot down aircraft, kill 15 troops. … The president speaks, says: I will punish all of you, you are mutineers,’ the FSB launches a case -– and then nothing,” he added.

He said authorities must respond in 30 days, and while he doesn’t expect a substantive reply, he at least hopes to draw attention to this “erosion of the legal system of a state. It is very interesting what they will write there, how they will justify people committing an armed rebellion,” Yuferev said.

Whether other charges will be filed is unclear. Prominent lawyer Ivan Pavlov told AP that mounting an armed rebellion is only one charge, and that Mr. Prigozhin may face others -– especially since deaths occurred — but so far, “no one is talking about it.” Another topic drawing official silence is how the FSB — the successor agency to the feared KGB — failed to prevent the uprising, even though it routinely boasts of averting terrorist attacks, sabotage plots and other major crimes.

Russian security experts Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan said the FSB’s Rostov department “barricaded itself in its city headquarters,” while its military counterintelligence operatives assigned to Wagner ”did nothing.”

After Mr. Prigozhin announced his intentions June 23 to act against Russia’s Defence Minister, the FSB issued a statement urging Wagner fighters not to follow the rogue commander and for the troops “to detain him.”

Soldatov and Borogan wrote in a recent article that such a call for the mercenaries to take that action was odd, since only law enforcement agencies and security services like the FSB have the power to detain people.

Mark Galeotti of University College, London, an analyst on Russian security affairs, said the rebellion tested previous assumptions that Putin could count on his security forces.

“Now, the first time there’s a real challenge we actually see, security forces are willing to hang back and wait and see what happens,” he told AP.

So far, there has been no negative impact on the FSB, which Galeotti called “Mr. Putin’s favoured institution,” having been a former member.

Asked by AP during a conference call with reporters Monday why the FSB failed to stop the mutiny, Kremlin spokesman Peskov refused comment, except to say that such services “perform their functions, they do it properly.”

He also noted Putin last week had praised soldiers, law enforcement and security officers and “expressed his gratitude” to them.

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Pelosi says Ukraine, democracy ‘must win’

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“We thought we could die.”

The Russian invasion had just begun when Nancy Pelosi made a surprise visit to Ukraine, the House speaker then the highest-ranking elected U.S. official to lead a congressional delegation to Kyiv.

Ms. Pelosi and the lawmakers were ushered under the cloak of secrecy into the capital city, an undisclosed passage that even to this day she will not divulge.

“It was very, it was dangerous,” Ms. Pelosi told The Associated Press before April 30th’s one-year anniversary of that trip.

“We never feared about it, but we thought we could die because we’re visiting a serious, serious war zone,” Ms. Pelosi said. “We had great protection, but nonetheless, a war — theater of war.”

Ms. Pelosi’s visit was as unusual as it was historic, opening a fresh diplomatic channel between the U.S. and Ukraine that has only deepened with the prolonged war. In the year since, a long list of congressional leaders, senators and chairs of powerful committees, both Democrats and Republicans, followed her lead, punctuated by President Joe Biden’s own visit this year.

The steady stream of arrivals in Kyiv has served to amplify a political and military partnership between the U.S. and Ukraine for the world to see, one that will be tested anew when Congress is again expected this year to help fund the war to defeat Russia.

“We must win. We must bring this to a positive conclusion — for the people of Ukraine and for our country,” Ms. Pelosi said.

“There is a fight in the world now between democracy and autocracy, its manifestation at the time is in Ukraine.”

With a new Republican majority in the House whose Trump-aligned members have baulked at overseas investments, Ms. Pelosi, a Democrat, remains confident the Congress will continue backing Ukraine as part of a broader U.S. commitment to democracy abroad in the face of authoritarian aggression.

“Support for Ukraine has been bipartisan and bicameral, in both houses of Congress by both parties, and the American people support democracy in Ukraine,” Ms. Pelosi told AP. “I believe that we will continue to support as long as we need to support democracy … as long as it takes to win.”

Now the speaker emerita, an honorary title bestowed by Democrats, Ms. Pelosi is circumspect about her role as a U.S. emissary abroad. Having visited 87 countries during her time in office, many as the trailblazing first woman to be the House speaker, she set a new standard for pointing the gavel outward as she focused attention on the world beyond U.S. shores.

In her office tucked away at the Capitol, Ms. Pelosi shared many of the honours and mementoes she has received from abroad, including the honorary passport she was given on her trip to Ukraine, among her final stops as speaker.

It’s a signature political style, building on Ms. Pelosi’s decades of work on the House Intelligence Committee, but one that a new generation of House leaders may— or may not— choose to emulate.

The new Speaker Kevin McCarthy hosted Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library this month, the Republican leader’s first foray as leader into foreign affairs.

Democrat Hakeem Jeffries took his own first trip abroad as House minority leader, leading congressional delegations last week to Ghana and Israel.

Ms. Pelosi said it’s up to the new leaders what they will do on the global stage.

“Other speakers have understood our national security— we take an oath to protect and defend— and so we have to reach out with our values and our strength to make sure that happens,” she said.

“I just want to say that this, for me, was the most logical thing to do,” Ms. Pelosi said.

When Pelosi arrived in Kyiv, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stood outside to meet the U.S. officials, a photo that ricocheted around the world as a show of support for the young democracy fighting Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion.

“The courage of the president in greeting us on the street rather than us just meeting him in his office was yet again another symbol of the courage of the people of Ukraine,” she said.

Ms. Pelosi told Mr. Zelenskyy in a video released at the time “your fight is a fight for everyone.”

A year on, with no end to the war in sight, Ms. Pelosi said: “I would have hoped that it would have been over by now.”

Ms. Pelosi’s travel abroad has not been without political challenges and controversy. During the Trump era, she acted as an alternative emissary overseas, reassuring allies that the U.S. remained a partner despite the Republican president’s “America First” neo-isolationist approach to foreign policy.

Last year, in one of her final trips as a speaker, Ms. Pelosi touched down with a delegation in Taipei, crowds lining the streets to cheer her arrival, a visit with the Taiwanese president that drew a sharp rebuke from Beijing, which counts the island as its own.

“Cowardly,” she said about the military exercises China launched in the aftermath of her trip.

Ms. Pelosi offered rare praise for Mr. McCarthy’s own meeting with Tsai, particularly its bipartisan nature and the choice of venue, the historic Reagan library.

“That was really quite a message and quite an optic to be there. And so I salute what he did,” she said.

In one of her closing acts as House speaker in December, Ms. Pelosi hosted Mr. Zelenskyy for a joint address to Congress. The visit evoked the one made by Winston Churchill, the Prime Minister of Britain, at Christmastime in 1941 to speak to Congress in the Senate chamber of a “long and hard war” during World War II.

Mr. Zelenskyy presented to Congress a Ukrainian flag signed by front-line troops that Ms. Pelosi said will eventually be displayed at the U.S. Capitol.

The world has changed much since Ms. Pelosi joined Congress— one of her first trips abroad was in 1991 when she dared to unfurl a pro-democracy banner in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square shortly after the student demonstrations that ended in a massacre.

After the long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s again Russia and China that remain front of her mind.

“The role of Putin in terms of Russia that is a bigger threat than it was when I came to Congress,” she said. A decade after the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, she said, Mr. Putin went up.

“That’s where the fight for democracy is taking place,” she said.

And, she said, despite the work she and others in Congress have done to point out the concerns over China’s military and economic rise, and its human rights record, “that has only gotten worse.”

Often mentioned as someone who could become an actual ambassador— there have been musings that Mr. Biden could nominate her to Rome or beyond— Ms. Pelosi said she is focused on her two-year term in office, no longer the House speaker but the representative from San Francisco.

“Right now my plan is to serve my constituents,” Ms. Pelosi said. “I like having 7,50,000 bosses, rather than one.”

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Why purported cross-border attack ups ante in Ukraine war

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Russia has declared that saboteurs from Ukraine crossed into its territory and attacked border villages, a raid that fuelled fears of an escalation in the war as it has dragged into a second year.

A day after Thursday’s purported attack, details of what happened remain scarce and conflicting theories about possible perpetrators and their goals are still swirling.

Also Read | Putin tells Russian security council to tighten ‘anti-terror’ measures

Ukrainian officials have denied involvement and a presidential aide described it as a false-flag attack used by the Kremlin to justify the war in Ukraine.

An obscure group of Russian nationalists who described themselves as part of the Ukrainian military claimed responsibility for the attack, but their status and goals remain unclear.

What did Russian and Ukrainian officials say?

Russian authorities reported the attack on the villages of Lyubechane and Suchany in the Bryansk region early Thursday, saying that several dozen saboteurs infiltrated from Ukraine, killed two civilians and planted explosives.

Russian President Vladimir Putin cancelled a scheduled trip to an event in southern Russia because of what he described as a “terrorist attack” deliberately targeting civilians.

Hours later, the Russian authorities said the intruders were pushed back into Ukraine and targeted by artillery fire.

Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak described the Russian claims as “a classic deliberate provocation,” saying that Russia “wants to scare its people to justify the attack on another country and the growing poverty after the year of war”. But Podolyak also alleged that the attack could be the work of Russian guerrillas who had rebelled against the Kremlin.

“The partisan movement in the Russian Federation is getting stronger and more aggressive,” he said.

Ukraine’s military intelligence representative, Andrii Cherniak, similarly denied Ukraine’s involvement while also alleging that Russia is facing an uprising among its own disgruntled people.

“This was done by the Russians, Ukraine has nothing to do with it,” he told AP.

Mr. Cherniak noted that a group calling itself the Russian Volunteer Corps had claimed responsibility for the attack.

What is the Russian Volunteer Corps

The Russian Volunteer Corps released a video featuring its members standing outside a post office in one of the villages and urging the Russians to rebel against Mr. Putin.

The group has described itself as “a volunteer formation” of Ukraine’s armed forces. Little is known about the group, the number of its members and its ties, if any, with the Ukrainian military.

Russian bloggers identified some of the men who appeared in the video filmed in the village of Lyubechane as former members of Russia’s radical nationalist groups who had moved to Ukraine several years ago.

Ukrainian New voice-NV news portal quoted Ilya Bogdanov, who identified himself as a member of the Corps, confirming that his colleagues who crossed into the Bryansk region were serving in the Ukrainian army.

Ukrainian military analyst Oleh Zhdanov said that the Corps’ claim could be a Ukrainian propaganda effort intended to embarrass Russia.

“It’s quite possible if our propagandists believe it would be more efficient to cast it as a heroic feat and pretend that there is an entire corps of them,” he told the AP.

Mr. Zhdanov noted that despite its flashy name, the group could include just a handful of Russians who signed a contract to fight alongside the Ukrainian military.

What do experts say?

Security analysts say it’s hard to figure out quickly who was behind the attack.

Mark Cancian, a senior adviser for the International Security Program at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, argued that Ukraine could have launched the attack to force Russia to pull back some of its forces from the front line to tighten the border.

“If I had to bet I would say it’s the real thing,” Cancian said. “I can see why Ukraine might want to do this. Most of the border is not contested at the moment, so Ukraine might want to be forcing Russia to guard more of its borders, maybe pull some forces out of the Donbass.”

Eleonora Tafuro, a Russia expert at the ISPI think tank in Milan, said it appears possible the attack was carried out by the Russian Volunteer Corps to foment a sense of insecurity among the local population.

“The area is very exposed to fighting,” she said. “It could be a message: You are vulnerable. You are exposed.’”

Brad Bowman, senior director of the Centre on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defence of Democracies, warned against quickly rushing to conclusions, noting that the Kremlin could be interested in rallying the public as the war drags on.

“The Kremlin’s information warfare efforts are meant to deceive Russians so they will believe that Russia is under grave threat and will be willing to fight and die in an illegal war of aggression,” he said.

And William Courtney, who served as ambassador to Kazakhstan and Georgia and is now a senior fellow at the RAND Corp., a non-profit research institute, argued that the purported attack could be a false-flag operation.

“It has an engineered quality to it that was carried out to make Ukraine look like a terrorist state,” Courtney said.

What are the consequences of the attack?

The purported attack came as an embarrassment for Mr. Putin, who had told officials to tighten protection of the long and porous border with Ukraine earlier in the week.

It has caused outrage among Russian hawks, who harshly criticised the Kremlin for failing to protect the border and mount a quick and forceful retaliation.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the rogue millionaire who owns the Wagner Group military company, mocked the authorities for idly watching the crossing of another Russian red line. And Ramzan Kadyrov, the regional leader of Chechnya, has challenged the Kremlin to up the ante by introducing martial law.

Hawkish commentators and military bloggers have derided the Kremlin’s indecision, calling for strikes on Ukraine’s presidential office and the deployment of hit men to target top Ukrainian officials.

It remains unclear if Mr. Putin could use the incident to double down.

In his initial statement, the Russian leader cast the purported attack as proof that Russia did the right thing by invading Ukraine, but he didn’t signal an intention to change the status of the operation or ramp up strikes.

On Friday, Mr. Putin had a video call with members of his Security Council, saying in opening remarks that it would focus on tightening protection against terrorist attacks but giving no details.

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Putin orders tightening of Ukraine border as drones hit Russia

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Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the border with Ukraine tightened on Tuesday after several drones attacked inside Russian territory, including one that crashed just 100 kilometres (60 miles) from Moscow in an alarming development for Russian defences.

The drones caused no injuries but raised questions about the Kremlin’s security more than a year after Russia’s full-scale invasion of its neighbour.

Moscow blamed Kyiv for the attacks. Ukrainian officials did not immediately claim responsibility, but they similarly avoided directly acknowledging responsibility for past strikes and sabotage while emphasising Ukraine’s right to hit any target in Russia.

Also Read | U.N. chief points to ‘massive’ rights violations in Ukraine

Although Mr. Putin did not refer to any specific attacks in a speech in the Russian capital, his comments came hours after the drones targeted several areas in southern and western Russia. Authorities closed the airspace over St. Petersburg in response to what some reports said was a drone.

Also on Tuesday, several Russian television stations aired a missile attack warning that officials blamed on a hacking attack.

The drone attacks on Monday night and Tuesday morning targeted regions inside Russia along the border with Ukraine and deeper into the country, according to local Russian authorities.

A drone fell near the village of Gubastovo, 100 kilometers (60 miles) from Moscow, Andrei Vorobyov, governor of the region surrounding the Russian capital, said in an online statement.

The drone did not inflict any damage, Vorobyov said, but it likely targeted “a civilian infrastructure object”.

Pictures of the drone showed it was a Ukrainian-made model with a reported range of up to 800 kilometres (nearly 500 miles) but no capacity to carry a large load of explosives.

Russian forces early on Tuesday shot down a Ukrainian drone over the Bryansk region, local Gov. Aleksandr Bogomaz said in a Telegram post.

Three drones also targeted Russia’s Belgorod region on Monday night, with one flying through an apartment window in its namesake capital, local authorities reported. Regional Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov said the drones caused minor damage to buildings and cars.

The Russian Defence Ministry said Ukraine used drones to attack facilities in the Krasnodar region and neighbouring Adygea.

It said the drones were brought down by electronic warfare assets, adding that one of them crashed into a field and another diverted from its flight path and missed an infrastructure facility it was supposed to attack.

While Ukrainian drone strikes on the Russian border regions of Bryansk and Belgorod are not unusual, the hits on the Krasnodar and Adygea regions further south were noteworthy.

A fire broke out at an oil depot in Russia’s Krasnodar region on Monday, Russia’s state RIA Novosti agency reported. Russian Telegram channels claimed that two drones exploded near the depot.

Some Russian commentators described the drone attacks as an attempt by Ukraine to showcase its capability to strike areas deep behind the lines, foment tensions in Russia and rally the Ukrainian public. Some Russian war bloggers described the raids as a possible rehearsal for a bigger, more ambitious attack.

Last year, Russian authorities repeatedly reported shooting down Ukrainian drones over annexed Crimea. In December, the Russian military said Ukraine used drones to hit two bases for long-range bombers deep inside Russian territory.

Separately, the government of St. Petersburg — Russia’s second-largest city about 1,300 kilometers (800 miles) north of the border with Ukraine — said early on Tuesday that it was temporarily halting all departures and arrivals at the city’s main airport, Pulkovo. It did not give a reason for the move.

Hours earlier, unconfirmed reports on Russia’s Telegram social network referred to the airspace over St. Petersburg being shut down and to overflights by Russian warplanes. It wasn’t immediately clear whether this was connected to drone attacks in Russia’s south.

The Russian military said its air defence forces in western Russia conducted drills on “detection, interception and identification” of enemy targets in its airspace, and in coordination with civilian air traffic services in an emergency situation.

The Russian Defence Ministry did not specifically mention St. Petersburg, but its statement appeared designed to explain the temporary closure of the airspace.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov refused to comment on the situation in St. Petersburg, urging reporters to wait for details from the country’s aviation authorities or the military. He noted that Mr. Putin had “full information” on the situation.

Speaking at Russia’s main security agency, the FSB, Mr. Putin urged the service to tighten security on the Ukraine border.

Russian media reported Tuesday that an air raid alarm interrupted the programming of several TV channels and radio stations in several Russian regions.

Footage posted by some news sites showed TV sets displaying a yellow sign with a person heading to a bomb shelter, with a female voice repeating: “Attention! Air raid alarm. Everyone should head to a shelter immediately.”

Russia’s Emergency Ministry said in an online statement that the announcement was a hoax “resulting from a hacking of the servers of radio stations and TV channels in some regions of the country”.

In other developments, four people were killed and five others wounded on Tuesday by renewed Russian shelling of the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson, regional Gov. Oleksandr Prokudin said in a Telegram.

A 68-year-old man was also killed as Russian forces shelled Kupiansk, a town in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region, its Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said.

The fiercest fighting continued to be in eastern areas of Ukraine, where Russia wants control over all four of the provinces it illegally annexed in September.

Ukrainian officials said that Russian forces have deployed additional troops and equipment, including modern T-90 tanks, in those areas.

Meanwhile, satellite photos analysed by AP appeared to show a Beriev A-50 early warning aircraft was parked at a Belarus air base just before a claimed attack by partisans there.

Images from Planet Labs PBC shows the A-50, a late Soviet-era aircraft known for its distinctive rotodome above its fuselage, parked on the apron of the Machulishchy Air Base near Minsk, Belarus’ capital, on February 19.

A lower-resolution image taken on February 23 showed a similarly shaped aircraft still parked there, though heavy cloud cover has blocked any images since.

Belarusian opposition organisation BYPOL claimed that guerrillas damaged the A-50 in an attack Sunday.

AP has been unable to independently confirm the claimed attack, which both Belarus and Russia have yet to acknowledge.

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