By Gleb Bryanski
MOSCOW (Reuters) -Ukrainian drones focused St. Petersburg on Sunday, Russian authorities mentioned, forcing the airport to shut for 5 hours as Vladimir Putin marked Russia’s Navy Day within the metropolis, regardless of the sooner cancellation of its naval parade because of safety issues.
St. Petersburg often holds a large-scale, televised navy parade on Navy Day, which incorporates a flotilla of warships and navy vessels crusing down the Neva River and is attended by Putin.
Final 12 months, Russia suspected a Ukrainian plan to assault town’s parade, in accordance with state tv.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed on Sunday that this 12 months’s parade had been cancelled for safety causes, following first studies of its cancellation in early July.
Putin arrived on the metropolis’s historic naval headquarters on Sunday by patrol velocity boat, from the place he adopted drills involving greater than 150 vessels and 15,000 navy personnel within the Pacific and Arctic Oceans and Baltic and Caspian Seas.
“At this time we’re marking this vacation in a working setting, we’re inspecting the fight readiness of the fleet,” Putin mentioned in a video tackle.
The Russian Defence Ministry mentioned air defence items downed a complete of 291 Ukrainian fixed-wing drones on Sunday, beneath a report 524 drones downed in assaults on Could 7, forward of Russia’s Victory Day parade on Could 9.
Alexander Drozdenko, governor of the Leningrad area surrounding St. Petersburg, mentioned that over ten drones had been downed over the realm, and falling particles injured a lady. At 0840 GMT on Sunday Drozdenko mentioned that the assault was repelled.
St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo airport was closed in the course of the assault, with 57 flights delayed and 22 diverted to different airports, in accordance with an announcement. Pulkovo resumed operations afterward Sunday.
Russian blogger Alexander Yunashev, a part of an official group of reporters travelling with Peskov, mentioned Peskov had informed him their flight from Moscow to St. Petersburg had been delayed by the drone assault for two hours on Sunday.
(Further reporting by Anton Kolodyazhnyy; Modifying by Alexandra Hudson)
