#krasnodar region

[awesome-casuallyfamouscollector]

Things in Russian Zombieland are becoming "Hot" and very interesting: In Krasnodar region, Molkino village, the Wagner PMC base is burning as reported in the village where the Wagner base was located for almost ten years; administrative buildings are burning, Russia, September 21, 2024. Source: Special Kherson Cat

P.S. A huge Russian ammunition depot also blew up in the Krasnodar region last night...Interesting coincidenceㅤ

[bogucharskaya]

cheburek

divnomorskoe, 2021

[snegirrou]

MBTI types of Russian cities that I have visited.

Moscow - ESTJ

Saint Petersburg - ISFP

Tyumen - ENTJ

Yekaterinburg - ENTJ

Krasnodar - ESFP

Kazan - ESFJ

Saratov - ENTP

Rostov-on-Don - ISFP

Novosibirsk - INTP

Nizhny Novgorod - ESFJ

Omsk - INTP

Volgograd - ISTP

Ufa - INFJ

Cheboksary - ESFJ

Perm - ISFJ

Sochi - ENFP

Sirius - INFJ (not exactly a city, but a separate territory from Sochi)

Elista - INFJ

In the photo: Tyumen, Moscow, Krasnodar, Saratov, Sirius, Nizhny Novgorod.

[russianreader]

In the (Solidarity) Zone

Russia: 19-year sentences for anti-war arson protest Report by Solidarity Zone The Central District Military Court at Yekaterinburg, in Russia, yesterday (10 April) handed down 19-year prison sentences to Roman Nasryev and Aleksei Nuriev, for firebombing an administrative office building where a military registration office is based. Roman Nasryev (left) and Aleksei Nuriev in court. Photo…

[xoheisse]

Oleksandr Yakushchenko

One of the Ukrainian teens who were forcibly taken from orphanages in Ukraine and given up for adoption, an 18-year-old boy from the Kherson region, committed suicide in Krasnodar Krai. He was trying to make it back to Ukraine for the holidays but had his passport taken away.

"Nobody f*cking needs me there. They made me understand that"

"When they put the flowers, they just came up and threw them as if he were a dog. And when it was time to leave, the foster family said: "Thank God he's dead. Less problems".

[merrymorningofmay]

An 18-year-old Ukrainian orphan, Oleksandr Yakushchenko, who was relocated from the Kherson region to Russia, reportedly committed suicide while living with a foster family in Russian Krasnodar Krai, Russian media Vazhnyie Istorii reported on December 24. The information had not been publicly disclosed. The head of the foster family, Oleksandr Lukashenko, said that Yakushchenko hanged himself a few kilometers from their home. “His body was found by workers heading to their shift in the morning,” Lukashenko said. When asked about the reasons behind the young man’s suicide, Lukashenko responded: “How would I know why? He was 18 years old, an adult. He just lived with us.” Vazhnyie Istorii reported at least one case when Lukashenka’s family took away his documents. It is unknown how many times this happened. Probably, the guardianship authorities were aware of this practice. “Guardianship said that he wanted to return to Ukraine, they took away his passport, and he went and hanged himself because of that,” says Karina Petrenko, who was brought up together with him in a Ukrainian orphanage.

[herpsandbirds]

Saw this moth(?) on palm in Russia, Krasnodar region. Was quite big, could you id this creature?? 🪵🪵🤏

Moth ID - Russia:

Hello, yes, this is a Palm Moth (Paysandisia archon), family Castniidae. They are native to South America, but have been introduced into Europe and West Asia.

Paysandisia archon - Wikipedia

[artthatgivesmefeelings]

Mykola Kornylovych Pymonenko (Ukrainian, 1862-1912) Matchmakers, n.d. Krasnodar Regional Art Museum

[mariacallous]

When the arsenal in Toropets detonated, the blast was so large it registered as a small earthquake and some eyewitnesses likened it to a small nuclear explosion. On the night of Sept. 17, the 107th Arsenal of the Main Missile and Artillery Directorate, a military facility about 300 miles from the Ukrainian border in the region of Tver, was struck by around 100 Ukrainian drones, destroying some of Russia’s most advanced rockets and air defense interceptors, and possibly newly arrived North Korean ballistic missiles. Three days later, another large-scale Ukrainian drone strike hit the Tikhoretsk Munitions Storage Facility in the southern Krasnodar region, a main distribution depot of Russian munitions sourced from North Korea. Well over 200 miles from Ukrainian-controlled territory, the attack resulted in another huge fireball. That same night, more drones sailed into the directorate’s 23rd Arsenal, again in Tver, igniting the facility.

In a matter of days, munitions worth hundreds of millions of dollars had been destroyed. Estonian military intelligence estimates that the bombing of the 107th Arsenal destroyed two to three months’ worth of munitions alone.

These were the latest sorties of Kyiv’s fleet of homemade unmanned aerial bombs, which over the past few months have immolated air bases, fuel depots, oil refineries and ammunition stockpiles, all of them well inside Russian territory.

Ukraine is now giving as good as it gets, hitting Russia on its own turf by land, sea and air, and prompting a new debate in Western capitals as to whether NATO allies should assist it in these deep strikes or can afford to do so without triggering nuclear war.

In August, Ukraine made a well-coordinated incursion into Kursk, the first time a foreign army had invaded sovereign Russia since World War II. Despite early Western forecasts that this operation would be swiftly and severely reversed by a Russian counterstrike, Ukrainian forces continue to hold an expanse of territory roughly the size of Los Angeles and have so far deflected from Russian efforts to dislodge them by invading from other axes. In square mileage, this surprise tactical victory eclipsed in the space of two weeks Russia’s yearlong advance in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donbas, where Moscow has committed enormous resources in manpower and artillery. According to members of the Ukrainian military interviewed by New Lines, at least some of these resources have now been redeployed to Kursk, partially fulfilling one of the stated aims of the offensive.

Though military cartographers and statisticians may assess these gains and losses as a decidedly mixed result after Kyiv’s third summer of fighting, Ukraine has also been making gains elsewhere, namely in the field of arms development. It is now manufacturing a fleet of combat and reconnaissance drones, both airborne and naval, as well as its own long-range missiles. Kyiv is using these weapons to do what Washington still refuses to allow it to do with Western equivalents: strike at Russian air bases, command-and-control hubs, logistics centers and energy infrastructure, all deep in Russia’s interior.

If the Kremlin entered the war under the “rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them,” to borrow a phrase from Sir Arthur Harris, the commander in chief of the U.K.’s Royal Air Force Bomber Command during World War II, Ukraine has spent the last months of 2024 bringing the war home to Russia and to Russians, with devastating effect. Ukrainian drone attacks have become so common that some enterprising Russian insurance companies have even started providing dedicated home insurance against drone attacks.

The only surprise is that this comes as any surprise.

During the Soviet era, Ukraine was a military-industrial powerhouse, home to the largest cargo aircraft ever built, the Antonov An-225 Mriya (the Russians destroyed it at start of the full-scale invasion), not to mention the entire line of T-64 main battle tanks and R-36M ballistic missiles, the introduction of which caused sleepless nights among Western military planners at the height of the Cold War — which is partly why NATO codenamed them “Satan.” Contemporary Ukraine has tapped into this heritage, and its engineers have gone to work again, this time to fight their former metropole and to make up for the American restriction on the use of Western artillery rockets and cruise missiles to target Russia.

According to Ukraine’s Ministry of Strategic Industries, Kyiv’s defense industrial base now commands 300,000 employees spread across 500 enterprises — four-fifths of them privately owned. Major Ukrainian public figures and charitable organizations have supported the effort by raising money and supporting the manufacture of drones.

Other Ukrainian civil society actors and volunteers have also turned hobbyist racing drones into remotely piloted, precision-guided munitions. FPV (first-person view) drones have become one of the most lethal weapons of the war — and one that Russia has copied to equal effect. Piloted by technicians stationed miles away wearing a virtual reality-style headset that captures the flight path as though they were on board, FPVs chase down soldiers on foot, on motorbikes or in armored vehicles and pound into command centers and military-occupied buildings. Recordings show everything until the moment of impact when the screen ominously turns to white noise.

So terrifying are FPVs — and so difficult to evade owing to their small size, speed and maneuverability — that Russian troops have committed suicide rather than face a grisly death from above. They’re also incredibly cheap and easy to mass produce, costing on average $300 to $500 depending on the components used. As such, these drones account for the majority of casualties on both sides, according to Lt. Gen. Oleksandr Pavlyuk, commander of Ukraine’s ground forces.

For all the domestic innovation, Ukraine insists it still needs to use foreign weapons systems to go after strategic targets in Russia. The U.K., which was the first country to supply long-range munitions to Ukraine and has been one of Kyiv’s more bullish allies in the war, has been in favor of lifting such restrictions. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has even been lobbying European allies, such as Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, to support a proposal to allow Ukraine to use European-provided long-range weapons inside Russia without U.S. approval, Bloomberg recently reported. Other British officials were reported to be holding similar talks with their French and German counterparts.

There are growing indications that Washington is also coming around to this point of view. According to sources in the Biden administration, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is “fully in favor” of letting Ukraine strike back but faces resistance among those fearful of escalation with Russia, including at the National Security Council and the Pentagon. During a recent trip to Kyiv, Blinken stated that since the start of the war, the U.S. has been willing to adapt its policy as the situation on the battlefield evolves. “From day one, we have adjusted and adapted,” Blinken said after meeting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. “Needs have changed as the battlefield has changed, and I have no doubt that we will continue to do this.”

These adaptations, while welcome, often come too late to save Ukrainian lives. After the Russian incursion into the northeastern region of Kharkiv in 2024, U.S. restrictions preventing Ukraine from striking targets on the Russian side of the border were lifted. Had they been lifted before the incursion, a member of Ukraine’s Kraken special forces unit told New Lines during a visit to the front in May, the Russian invasion could have been prevented entirely. An unknown number of Ukrainian casualties could have been prevented, and the city of Vovchansk would not have been razed to the ground.

Telegraphing to Washington that Russia can absorb losses on its own territory without starting World War III may be why the guns of August have been firing overtime.

Apart from the Kursk operation, the end of summer has seen the successful use of Ukraine’s long-range drone program. On the night of Aug. 2, these flying bombs struck the Morozovsk air base in Rostov, approximately 165 miles from Ukrainian-controlled territory. The base’s ammunition dump housed hundreds of glide bombs, deadly air-dropped munitions that can destroy entire buildings and fighting positions in a single hit. The dump was obliterated in the Ukrainian strike, which also destroyed at least one Russian Su-34 fighter-bomber and almost certainly damaged two more, plus airfield infrastructure.

Days later, on Aug. 8, another Ukrainian drone strike targeted Lipetsk air base (250 miles from the border), a major training center for the Russian air force. The ammunition dump at the base was likewise also completely destroyed, with the other buildings at the facility suffering damage as well. Then, on Aug. 22, Ukraine’s drones bombed Marinovka air base in what was possibly the most successful strike to date, destroying at least one more Su-34 and likely destroying or heavily damaging four more aircraft. The base’s facilities suffered extreme damage, with hangars, ammunition stores and emergency vehicles all taking hits.

“No individual strike tells us that much, but it’s the growing number and mass of systems involved that are most important,” Phillips O’Brien, professor of strategic studies at the University of St Andrews, told New Lines. “If Ukraine can wage a comprehensive ranged campaign against the Russian military, it will allow it to degrade Russian production, logistics, command and control. The types of targets which usually determine the outcome of wars.”

Just the fact that Ukraine can routinely and successfully target such air bases will have an impact on Russian air force operations, according to Lt. Col. Jahara Matisek⁩, a U.S. Air Force pilot and a professor at the U.S. Naval War College, who spoke in a personal capacity. “The biggest benefit is that it is forcing the Russian air force farther away from Ukraine, which decreases Russian ability to lob missiles and bombs into Ukraine.” He explained that it would also provide Ukraine with an opportunity to establish localized air superiority, giving Ukrainian ground offensives a greater ability to mass forces and maneuver in the open without fear of being attacked from the air.

Russia will continue to struggle to defend itself against Ukrainian drones, Matisek⁩ believes, because its air defense networks were designed to fend off a large-scale NATO and U.S. attack, rather than smaller, slower drones flying from Ukraine. “Cold War assumptions about how the U.S. and NATO would attack the USSR meant that Russian air defenses are oriented in that fashion. Hence, Russia likely never designed an air defense network to defend against Ukrainian incursions.”

To ward off Ukraine’s drones, Russia has instead opted for ad hoc measures such as painting the outlines of fake aircraft on the concrete hard stands and covering real ones under dozens of old tires — not the best form of camouflage against weapons that don’t rely on visual sensors to find their targets. The most effective way Russia defends against current Ukrainian attacks, however, is to simply fly all airworthy planes away from incoming drones, something that would be entirely ineffective should supersonic long-range Army Tactical Missile Systems, known as ATACMS, be allowed to target them.

Ukraine isn’t just pounding planes on the tarmac. Deep strikes have been directed at Russia’s strategic oil infrastructure, such as refineries, depots and even export ports. For instance, on Aug. 17 Ukrainian drones targeted the Kavkaz oil depot, a large storage facility in Proletarsk, in Rostov, causing a catastrophic fire that continued to burn for over two weeks. Hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of fuel was destroyed in one night, and the Proletarsk facility will be functionally useless for the foreseeable future. (Russian authorities eventually drafted in a number of Orthodox priests in an attempt to invoke divine intervention to put out the fire — a further sign of Moscow’s fecklessness in the face of these attacks.) Less than two weeks later, on Aug. 28, Ukraine hit the Atlas oil depot, another large storage facility, also in Rostov, precipitating yet another multiday fire but not before 40% of the facility’s fuel tanks had burned to the ground. Then, on Sept. 1, a wave of Ukrainian drones struck the Moscow Refinery, located just outside the Russian capital.

An assessment by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency estimated that Kyiv has so far disrupted 14% of Russia’s oil refining capacity and driven up domestic fuel prices by 20%-30% as of mid-March. This might have gone down well in Washington, given the attention paid to hobbling Russia’s war-oriented economy through sanctions, but such was not the case. The Biden administration responded to Ukraine’s targeting of Russia’s energy infrastructure by expressing its displeasure, citing the risk of rising global oil prices (the implication being that this would hurt the Democrats in November’s election). Self-deterrence has been a constant in U.S. security assistance, but Ukrainians and oil industry analysts alike greeted this American grumble with bemusement. Russia’s hydrocarbons industry keeps its tanks and personnel carriers moving and is thus a viable strategic target.

As with the incursion into Kursk, the impact of these strikes is not just physical but also psychological: They make a population largely indifferent to a foreign conflict acutely aware of its domestic costs. Ukraine’s incursion into Russia has seen the largest occupation of Russian territory since World War II, and like its deep strike weaponry, has shown Russia and the world that Ukraine retains the ability to inflict significant pain on its adversary.

The arrival of even more sophisticated Ukrainian drones will likely compound the pain for the Russians. On Aug. 24, Ukraine’s Independence Day — the third such celebration since the start of the full-scale invasion that was meant to take all of three days to be decided — Zelenskyy announced the successful employment of the new Ukrainian Palyanytsia. Named for a type of bread, the Ukrainian word for which is notoriously difficult for native Russian speakers to pronounce and is thus a convenient way of ferreting out Russian spies and collaborators, the drone will produce “unpronounceable results,” according to Zelenskyy. The Palyanytsia is powered by a rocket engine, meaning it will fly far faster than Ukraine’s current, mostly propellor-driven suicide drones, giving Russian aircraft less time to scramble out of the impact zone when used against their air bases. Days later, Zelenskyy also announced the successful test of an as yet unnamed Ukrainian ballistic missile. While he did not specify the exact type, it is likely the Hrim-2, a short-range ballistic missile that has been in development for over a decade, funding for which was supposedly earmarked by Ukraine’s then-defense minister, Oleksii Reznikov, in 2023.

These new weapon systems come a year after the introduction into Ukraine’s arsenal of a land-attack version of its Neptune anti-ship missile, a munition Kyiv famously used to sink the Russian Black Sea Fleet’s flagship cruiser, the Moskva, in the first year of the war. On Aug. 22, a Neptune cruise missile destroyed a Russian ferry loaded with fuel tanks in the Kerch Strait. “While Palyanytsias and Neptunes can achieve many objectives, there are tasks that only ATACMS, Storm Shadows and other weapons from our partners can fulfill,” Zelenskyy said.

From a logical and legal perspective, there is no reason to prohibit Ukraine from using Western weaponry to strike any legal Russian military target. American artillery and cluster munitions are already killing tens of thousands of Russians inside Ukraine, and the British-French Storm Shadow/SCALP-EG cruise missile conspicuously powdered the headquarters of the Black Sea Fleet in Crimea, claimed by Moscow to be an integral part of “Russia” since 2014.

There has also been a consistent pattern of the Kremlin making exaggerated threats when a Western capability has been on the table for delivery to Ukraine, only for it to later claim, once those weapons have been delivered, that they’re insignificant or that Russian forces have already destroyed all of them. This happened with HIMARS, Abrams tanks and F-16 fighter jets.

The West needs to stop allowing the Kremlin to set the rules of the game, Timothy Snyder, a European historian and professor at Yale University, told New Lines on a recent visit to Kyiv. “It’s the same psychological mistake where you’re playing by the rules that the other side has set for you as opposed to the rules of international law, which allow for an invaded country to defend itself.”

Washington’s escalations have routinely been met by Moscow’s anticlimactic responses. Nor does Russia stand to gain anything by resorting to nuclear weapons just because the munitions destroying its air bases, command centers and logistics hubs are made in the U.S. (or the U.K. or France) instead of in Ukraine. On the contrary, even the use of a tactical nuke in Ukrainian territory would yield no advantage on the battlefield. It would, however, transform Russia into even more of a pariah state overnight, alienate its critical ally China and likely lead to nuclear proliferation in places where neither Moscow nor Beijing would desire to see it, such as Kazakhstan, Finland, Turkey, Taiwan, Japan and Australia. As has no doubt been communicated, such an escalation would be met by a NATO conventional military response that would do even greater damage to Russia than anything currently on offer from Ukrainian ATACMS or Storm Shadows. Sergei Markov, someone often used as a hard-line voice of the Russian government in the Western press, told The Washington Post recently that the White House’s eventual rescission of the deep strike restriction has already been factored in by Russia’s war planners, who consider the decision a fait accompli — this in an article about Ukraine’s serial violation of Russia’s supposed “red lines.” Tellingly, Markov made no reference to weapons of mass destruction.

[blueiscoool]

It's a Hit

A Ukrainian drone striking a Russian oil refinery in Tuapse in the Krasnodar region.

[flagwars]

Russian Federal Subject Flag Wars: Round 1

This tournament will focus on the flags of Russia’s 83 federal subjects, which includes 21 republics, 9 krais, 46 oblasts, 2 federal cities, 1 autonomous oblast, and 4 autonomous okrugs. It will not include the flags of the land stolen from Ukraine.

The tournament will be followed by the Regional Flag Wars, a huge competition featuring the flags of regions/administrative divisions, with only one flag per country. Over the past year, I’ve released numerous polls to decide which regional flag will be included for each country. Russia is the final country on the list, and it is receiving its own tournament due to having so many administrative divisions. I hope everyone enjoys this tournament and is looking forward to the Regional Flag Wars! The Russian Federal Subject Flag Wars will begin this week.

Round 1:

1. Tver Oblast vs. Amur Oblast vs. Jewish Autonomous Oblast vs. Kamchatka Krai vs. Karelia

2. Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug vs. Bashkortostan vs. Tambov Oblast vs. Udmurtia vs. Kursk Oblast

3. Samara Oblast vs. Pskov Oblast vs. Adygea vs. Chukotka Autonomous Okrug vs. Khakassia

4. Khabarovsk Krai vs. Kalmykia vs. Altai Krai vs. Zabaykalsky Krai vs. Mordovia

5. Moscow Oblast vs. Dagestan vs. North Ossetia–Alania vs. St. Petersburg vs. Saratov Oblast

6. Primorsky Krai vs. Yaroslavl Oblast vs. Leningrad Oblast vs. Astrakhan Oblast vs. Komi Republic

7. Krasnoyarsk Krai vs. Irkutsk Oblast vs. Omsk Oblast vs. Lipetsk Oblast vs. Kabardino-Balkaria

8. Moscow vs. Ingushetia vs. Kostroma Oblast vs. Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug vs. Tomsk Oblast

9. Perm Krai vs. Orenburg Oblast vs. Stavropol Krai vs. Volgograd Oblast vs. Belgorod Oblast

10. Mari El vs. Kaliningrad Oblast vs. Sverdlovsk Oblast vs. Sakha vs. Arkhangelsk Oblast

11. Krasnodar Krai vs. Penza Oblast vs. Buryatia vs. Nizhny Novgorod Oblast vs. Kurgan Oblast

12. Chelyabinsk Oblast vs. Nenets Autonomous Okrug vs. Karachay-Cherkessia vs. Murmansk Oblast vs. Altai Republic

13. Novosibirsk Oblast vs. Tuva vs. Vologda Oblast vs. Smolensk Oblast vs. Novgorod Oblast

14. Tatarstan vs. Sakhalin Oblast vs. Ulyanovsk Oblast vs. Ryazan Oblast vs. Chechnya vs. Tyumen Oblast

15. Ivanovo Oblast vs. Chuvashia vs. Vladimir Oblast vs. Rostov Oblast vs. Magadan Oblast vs. Bryansk Oblast

16. Kaluga Oblast vs. Kemerovo Oblast vs. Oryol Oblast vs. Kirov Oblast vs. Voronezh Oblast vs. Tula Oblast

[bogucharskaya]

Black Sea cats, divnomorskoe, apr, 2021

[tomorrowusa]

It's not certain whether there will be any war crimes trials after the war, so Ukraine is going after war criminals on its own.

A senior Russian naval officer was killed in a car bombing in Crimea on Wednesday, the latest in a series of targeted attacks on Russian military personnel and pro-Kremlin figures in occupied Ukrainian territories as well as inside Russia. An official in Ukraine’s security services told the Ukrainian Pravda outlet that the agency had orchestrated the car bomb attack in the Russian-controlled port city of Sevastopol that killed Valery Trankovsky, the chief of staff of the 41st Missile Brigade of the Russian navy’s Black Sea fleet. The official said Trankovsky was “a war criminal” who had ordered missile strikes from the Black Sea at civilian targets in Ukraine. Russia has used warships from its Black Sea fleet, as well as strategic bombers, to conduct missile strikes on targets across Ukraine that have led to hundreds of civilian casualties.

Nice of Russia to keep its war criminals nearby so Ukraine can find them. 🙂 But the reach of Ukraine goes well beyond Russian-occupied parts of the country.

Ukraine has targeted dozens of Russian military officers and Russian-installed officials whom Kyiv has accused of committing war crimes in the country. Little is known about the clandestine Ukrainian resistance cells involved in assassinations and attacks on military infrastructure in Russian-controlled areas. In October, a high-ranking officer in the GRU military intelligence service who had recently returned from fighting in Ukraine was assassinated outside his house in a village in the Moscow region. The same month, Ukraine claimed responsibility for a car bomb attack that killed an official at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. Kyiv is also believed to have been behind the killing of a former Russian submarine captain who was shot dead while jogging in the southern Russian city of Krasnodar and may have been tracked through his profile on the fitness app Strava.

[blackpilledkremlintsarina5294]

Vladimir Putin visited districts in the Krasnodar Territory affected by floods

Vladimir Putin flew by helicopter over the Krasnodar Territory districts affected by heavy rains and floods. Presidential Plenipotentiary Envoy to the Southern Federal District Vladimir Ustinov provided explanations during the flight. The President held a briefing in Krymsk, one of the region's worst affected towns. The meeting was attended by Krasnodar Territory Governor Alexander Tkachev, head of the Krymsk municipal district Vasily Krutko, and representatives of the agencies involved in the search and rescue operation and disaster relief. Vladimir Putin had a telephone conversation with Artem Plyushch of the Federal Service for Supervision of Environment, Technology and Nuclear Management (Rostekhnadzor), who reported on the state of the Neberdzhayevskaya water reservoir. The President was informed that the unplanned discharge of water from this reservoir, which could cause flooding in the region, would not be possible technologically. When water reaches the maximum level, the reservoir is drained naturally through the overflow pipe and is not forced. During the meeting, Vladimir Putin announced that every family affected by the disaster will receive financial assistance for urgent needs in the amount of 10,000 rubles [$340]; later 50,000 rubles will be allocated for each family member in the form of compensation for lost property from the regional budget, and 100,000 from the federal budget. Families that have lost members in the disaster will receive compensation of one million rubles from the federal budget and the same amount from the regional budget. July 7, 2012

[airsllides]

airsLLide No. 19008: RA-42350, Yakovlev 42, Kuban Airlines, Moscow-Vnukovo, July 22, 2000.

With the crew leisurely gathered below the aft airstairs, the Yakovlev almost seems to pose in front of the vintage style airport sign on Vnukovo's terminal building while it awaits its passengers for the flight home to Krasnodar. While the aircraft is marked with titles in English and uses Latin characters, the letters ALK on the forward fuselage actually refer to the company name in its native Russian wording, Aviatsionniye Linii Kubani (Aviation Lines of the Kuban Region).

[ukrainenews]

Moscow has accused Kyiv of staging a drone attack intended to kill the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, in the Kremlin, and vowed to retaliate.

The Kremlin said on Wednesday that two drones had been used in the attack, but that they had been disabled by Russian defences.

In a statement published on its website, the Kremlin stated it considered the attack a planned terrorist act and an attempt on the life of the president of the Russian Federation.

“Two unmanned aerial vehicles were aimed at the Kremlin. As a result of timely actions taken by the military and special services with the use of radar warfare systems, the vehicles were put out of action,” the Kremlin press service said. It said that debris from the drone “fell on the territory of the Kremlin”.

“There were no victims and material damage,” the Kremlin said, adding that “the Russian side reserves the right to take retaliatory measures where and when it sees fit”.

“The president was not hurt as a result of the terrorist attack,” the Kremlin said.

Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said Putin was not in the Kremlin at the time of the attack. Peskov added that Putin would spend the day at the Novo-Ogaryovo state residence outside Moscow.

The Ukrainian president, Volodomyr Zelenskiy, denied that Ukraine was involved in the attack. He said: “We don’t attack Putin, or Moscow, we fight on our territory and defend our towns and cities.”

“We leave it to the tribunal,” Zelenskiy added.

The Ukrainian president made his comments during a trip to Helsinki, where he also said Ukraine would launch a counteroffensive against Russian forces soon.

Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to the Ukrainian president, also denied Ukraine’s involvement in the attack, saying it was the result of “local resistance forces”.

“Ukraine wages an exclusive defensive war and does not attack targets on the territory of the Russian Federation,” Podolyak said in a tweet.

“[The] emergence of unidentified unmanned aerial vehicles at energy facilities or on Kremlin’s territory can only indicate the guerrilla activities of local resistance forces. As you know, drones can be bought at any military store.”

Podolyak added: “Something is happening in RF [Russia], but definitely without Ukraine’s drones over the Kremlin.”

(snipped for length)

One unverified video circulating on social media showed what appeared to be smoke coming out of the Kremlin overnight. A second dramatic clip appeared to show the moment one of the drones hit the rooftop of the Kremlin Senate, an 18th-century mansion within the grounds of the Kremlin.

The Kremlin Senate reportedly houses the presidential administration, including Putin’s presidential office and his personal apartment.

Putin is understood to spend most of his time at the Novo-Ogaryovo state residence outside Moscow, although Peskov last week said that the president “occasionally” sleeps at his Kremlin apartment.

Several senior officials called on Putin to take retaliatory action.

Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev said the overnight drone attack on the Kremlin left Moscow with no options but to “eliminate” Zelenskiy and his “clique” in Kyiv.

Vyacheslav Volodin, the chair of the State Duma, said the “Kyiv regime” should be labelled as terrorists and destroyed. “We will demand the use of weapons that can stop and destroy the Kyiv terrorist regime,” he added.

Russia has sustained a number of embarrassing drone attacks on its military bases and fuel depots over the course of the fighting, including in occupied Crimea. In a separate incident on Wednesday, a large fire at a fuel depot in southern Russia’s Krasnodar region broke out as a result of what local authorities said was a drone attack.

Ukraine typically declines to claim responsibility for attacks on Russia or Russian-annexed Crimea, though Kyiv officials have frequently celebrated such attacks with cryptic or mocking remarks.

If Kyiv or domestic opposition groups are responsible for the incident, it would once again expose vulnerabilities in the heart of Russia’s centre of power.

Samuel Bendett, a drone specialist with the Center for Naval Analyses in the US, said the video of what appeared to be the second drone raid suggested the craft had thin wings. That would point to an attack from a relatively sophisticated operator, he said, although not necessarily a state actor, using a drone such as a $9,500 (£7,500) Chinese-made Mugin-5.

Fixed-wing drones have longer ranges and flight times than simple and cheap quadcopters, and a craft such as a Mugin-5 can theoretically fly for seven hours at about 75mph (120km/h), making long-range operation possible.

Analysts speculated the drone could also have been a Ukrainian-made UJ-22, which has a similar speed and range, according to the manufacturer’s website, but the brief footage and difficulty expanding to a clear image meant any firm identification was impossible.

Russian drone experts speculated on whether the drone was launched from as far afield as Ukraine, theoretically possible despite the distances, or from somewhere close to Moscow.

A Russian drone expert, Alexei Rogozin, told a drone Telegram channel that the drone could have been controlled from “several kilometers” away by a pilot relying on the drone camera for navigation, rather than remote preset coordinates.

It may have also been equipped with anti-jamming devices, he added.

The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said he has seen Kremlin reports of the drone attack but “can’t in any way validate them”.

“We simply don’t know,” Blinken told reporters. When asked about the US position on any possible attacks by Ukraine on Russia, he said: “These are decisions for Ukraine to make about how it is going to defend itself.”

The attack at the Kremlin came days before the 9 May Victory Day parade that marks the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany. The Victory Day parade in Red Square, which is located next to the Kremlin, is a highly symbolic annual demonstration of military might in Russia, during which Putin traditionally gives a speech.

Before Wednesday’s drone attack, several regions in Russia scrapped their parades amid fears of Ukrainian strikes. The Kremlin said the parade would go ahead in Moscow despite the incident.

Earlier in the year, Russia installed missile systems designed to intercept aircraft and incoming missiles on top of several defence and administrative buildings in central Moscow.

“We’ll let you know in due time,” Putin’s spokesperson Peskov said when asked if Putin would return to the Kremlin on Thursday.