Putin Said to Remain Outside Moscow Amid Drone Strikes on Capital
Ukrainian drones attacked Moscow overnight, killing an elderly man and damaging a major retailer's warehouse, while reports claim President Vladimir Putin stayed in eastern Russia.
Ukrainian drones carried out a large-scale assault on Moscow overnight, striking a warehouse belonging to the online retailer Wildberries in the suburb of Podolsk and killing an 83-year-old man, provincial governor Andrei Vorobyov said on Telegram. The attacks injured several others and prompted the Russian defence ministry to report that 822 Ukrainian drones had been shot down.
According to the independent Telegram channel Mozhem Obyasnit, President Vladimir Putin avoided the capital during the attacks, travelling eastward to regions beyond the Urals and using a decoy aircraft on a recent visit to Novosibirsk. The channel added that the Kremlin continued to list meetings as taking place in Moscow despite the president’s apparent relocation.
In a separate commentary, Andrei Klepach, chief economist at Vnesheconombank and former presidential appointee, told a forum in Moscow that Russia was losing both technological and economic competition globally, including to Ukraine. He warned that the war was becoming a costly attrition conflict. Klepach was dismissed from his post shortly after his remarks became public.