At night, they attacked Kyiv again, and another one in Russiathere was a fire at an oil refinery that supplies Russian ships of the Black Sea Fleet. Russia has accused Ukraine of a botched assassination attempt on President Putin in a drone attack on the Kremlin and threatened to retaliate. President of Ukraine Zelenskyi said that Kyiv had nothing to do with the alleged attack. According to Zelenskyi, 21 civilians were killed by Russian shells in the Kherson region of Ukraine, a hypermarket, a train station and residential buildings were hit. The counteroffensive has already begun, and Wagner’s mercenaries are noticing the activation at the front, claims Yevgeny Prigozhin.

Basic information about the war in Ukraine, day 435, TEXT:

08:19Ukrainian air defenses shot down 18 of 24 kamikaze drones launched by Russia in a pre-dawn attack on Thursday, Reuters reported.

The Kyiv City Administration announced that all the missiles and drones that fired at the Ukrainian capital for the third time in four days had been destroyed.

Of the 15 “Shakhed” kamikaze drones that attacked the city of Odessa, located on the Black Sea coast, air defense destroyed 12, and three hit the university complex. There were no casualties, reported the Ukrainian military command in the south of the country.

07:45The Kyiv City State Administration released the results of the morning attacks on Telegram on Thursday, noting that there were no victims and no “destruction of infrastructure or residential facilities,” The Guardian reports.

07:35 Deputies from the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR), led by its leader Leonid Slutsky, submitted a draft law to the State Duma, which proposes to prohibit persons who hold key positions in matters of security and sovereignty of the country from owning property abroad. The document was recently published in the database of the Russian parliament, Sega.bg reports, citing Rador.

07:09A large fire broke out at a fuel depot in southern Russia, near the Crimean peninsula in the Black Sea, after a drone attack, the official Russian news agency TASS reported early Thursday morning, DPA quoted employees as saying.

01:05The photo shows a faint trace of the explosion on the dome of the Kremlin

A photo taken Wednesday by Getty Images shows a sheet of metal and a black stain from one of two explosions on the Kremlin grounds.

Early Wednesday morning, two drones exploded near the Senate dome — according to CNN, the first drone explosion happened right on top of the dome.

The attack on the Kremlin seems to have been carried out by cheap drones

00:39US Senator Mark Warner, chairman of the US Senate Intelligence Committee, told reporters on Wednesday that “there is still no indication” that Ukraine was behind the alleged drone attack on the Kremlin, CNN reported.

“We don’t have a lot of information yet,” Warner said. “I think the committee expressed any information that we get, we need to get information from the agency director as soon as possible. At least at the moment, there are no signs that it came from the Ukrainians.”

00:33 Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is expected to speak in The Hague on Thursday, the Dutch government said, Reuters reports.

00:15Expert: The attack on the Kremlin appears to have been carried out by cheap drones, possibly made in China

Samuel Bendett, a drone specialist at the US Center for Naval Analyses, said that based on video of the second raid, the drone used “appears to be thin-winged”. This indicates an attack by an established operator, though not necessarily a state actor, using a drone such as the $9,500 Chinese-made Mugin-5.

A brief summary of recent events:​

• Drone attack on the Kremlin: three important questions. Although the perpetrator of the attack remains unknown, Ukraine has the technical and technological capabilities to deliver long-range strikes to the heart of Russia and has done so in the past. “It could be a Ukrainian UJ-22 (model) drone or a Chinese Mugin-5 drone, apparently previously used by Ukraine,” and the Ukrainian PD-1 drone is another option.
• The photo shows a faint trace of the explosion on the dome of the Kremlin. A photo taken Wednesday by Getty Images shows a sheet of metal and a black stain from one of two explosions on the Kremlin grounds.
• Expert: The attack on the Kremlin appears to have been carried out by cheap drones, possibly made in China.
• Former Russian lawmaker Ilya Ponomaryov, suspected of ties to rebel groups in Russia, claims that the drone attack on the Kremlin was the work of Russian partisans, not the Ukrainian military, CNN reports.
• US Senator Mark Warner, chairman of the US Senate Intelligence Committee, told reporters on Wednesday that “there is still no indication” that Ukraine was behind the alleged drone attack on the Kremlin, CNN reported.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is expected to speak in The Hague on Thursday, the Dutch government said, Reuters reports.
• Pope Francis spoke with a senior member of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) on Wednesday, days after the pontiff made intriguing but confusing comments about the Vatican’s involvement in a mission to end the war in Ukraine, Reuters reported.
• A large fire broke out early Wednesday at a fuel depot near a key bridge connecting mainland Russia to Crimea, a Russian official said, days after Moscow accused Ukraine of attacking an oil facility from Sevastopol.
• Secretary of State Anthony Blinken confirmed that the US has authorized a new package of weapons and equipment for Ukraine worth 300 million dollars.
• “An empty barrel makes more noise” / Ukrainian response to Medvedev, who called to “remove Zelensky”.
• Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on social media on Wednesday that an alleged overnight drone attack on the Kremlin left Moscow with no choice but to “eliminate” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi and his “clique” in Kyiv, Reuters reported.
• A brilliant move by a Finnish newspaper to circumvent Russian censorship in Ukraine. A Finnish newspaper said on Wednesday it had found a way to bypass Russian media censorship by hiding news and reports about Ukraine in a popular online game in Russia, AFP reported.
• Russia launched its third round of nighttime attacks on Kyiv in six days, city authorities said Wednesday morning, but air defense systems destroyed all the drones, with no reports of casualties or damage.

——————

The events of Monday, the 434th day of the Russian invasion, were broadcast LIVE on HotNews.ro