MOSCOW: Russia on Friday said it downed 221 Ukrainian drones, one of the highest tallies in the war, as Moscow and key ally Belarus began major military drills, rattling the West.
Moscow’s defence ministry said its alert systems had “intercepted and destroyed” the drones overnight, over half of which flew over the regions of Bryansk and Smolensk.
Twenty-eight drones were shot down over the Leningrad region, which surrounds the city of St Petersburg, and nine in the Moscow region.
Leningrad governor Aleksandr Drozdenko said a fire had broken out on a vessel in the Port of Primorsk, a major facility on the Baltic Sea, but the blaze had been brought under control and there was no risk of an oil spill.
The attacks came after Poland, which borders Ukraine, accused Russia of launching a drone raid on its territory this week.
Moscow has denied targeting the country and said there was no evidence the drones were Russian.
But France and Germany moved to bolster the defence of Polish airspace, with the UN Security Council calling an emergency meeting to discuss the allegations.
Russia has targeted Ukraine with regular drone barrages as part of an ongoing offensive there.
Meanwhile, Russia and Belarus began their joint “Zapad” military exercises, as Moscow’s forces grind across the sprawling front line in Ukraine and escalating aerial attacks on Ukrainian cities.
NATO’s eastern flank members that border Belarus — Poland, Lithuania and Latvia — are on high alert over the drills, held near Borisov, a town east of the capital Minsk.
All three countries have ramped up security ahead of the exercises, with Poland ordering the complete closure of its border with Belarus for their duration.
Usually held every four years, the 2025 iteration of Zapad is the first during the conflict in Ukraine, and is to run until September 16.
Moscow sent around 200,000 troops to similar drills in 2021, just months before it launched its Ukraine offensive.
But this year’s Zapad is expected to be much smaller, since hundreds of thousands of Russian troops are deployed in Ukraine -AFP