Russia dims celebrations as drones fly near Putin's birthplace

2025-07-27 17:17:00, Kosova & Bota CNA

Russia held subdued ceremonies in honor of the navy on July 27 in St. Petersburg, citing security concerns, while authorities in the surrounding region reported that air defense forces shot down several drones that they said were launched from Ukraine.

Meanwhile, Russia continued its attacks on Ukraine, where officials said the military shot down 78 of 83 attack or decoy drones launched overnight and in the morning, including some whose fragments damaged buildings in the Poltava region, located between Kiev and the front line in the east.

Russian President Vladimir Putin brought back the Navy Day parade on the Neva River in his hometown of St. Petersburg in 2017 as part of ongoing efforts to celebrate the military and ignite patriotic sentiment.

But the naval parade was canceled this year, a decision announced by local authorities late last week. On July 27, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that “this is related to the general situation, security reasons, which are above all.”

Russian officials said more than 10 drones crashed in the Leningrad region, which surrounds St. Petersburg, early on Wednesday, and the governor said a woman was slightly injured by falling debris. Dozens of flights were suspended at St. Petersburg's Pulkovo airport.

Russia's Defense Ministry said nearly 100 drones were shot down in various regions of Russia overnight.

Putin was in St. Petersburg and received reports of a four-day naval exercise that ended on July 27 and involved ships from the Baltic Sea, opposite St. Petersburg, to the Pacific.

He pledged to build more warships and intensify naval training, saying that "the navy's striking power and combat capability will be raised to a new level of quality."

Since Russia's full invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Kiev's forces have sunk or damaged several Russian warships in the Black Sea, hampering its operations there and forcing it to withdraw from the occupied Crimean Peninsula to a base in Russia, Novorossiysk.

Although not with the same intensity as the relentless airstrikes that Russia has launched on Ukrainian cities across the country and which have increased in recent months, Kiev has agitated Russia with drone attacks.

In a social media post on July 26, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Russian attacks on cities, towns and infrastructure "certainly cannot remain unanswered, and Ukrainian long-range drones ensure that."

“Russian military enterprises, Russian logistics, and Russian airfields must see that Russia’s own war is now hitting them with real consequences,” he wrote. “The accuracy of our drones, the day-to-day nature of Ukraine’s responses – these are some of the arguments that will surely bring peace closer.”

Russian and Ukrainian negotiators made no visible progress toward peace in a brief third round of direct talks in Istanbul on July 23. Russia has rejected calls from the United States, European countries and Ukraine for a ceasefire, and Kiev and Moscow remain at odds over key issues such as territory and security.

Among other things, Russia demands that Ukraine give up four land regions that it baselessly claims are now part of it, including parts that Russian forces do not control, and accept strict limits on the size of its armed forces and foreign military assistance.

US President Donald Trump, who has sought to broker a peace deal since taking office in January, threatened on July 14 to impose new sanctions on Moscow - and secondary sanctions on countries that buy oil products from Russia - if Russia and Ukraine do not reach an agreement by early September.

In an interview with Fox News broadcast on July 26, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that Trump is becoming "increasingly frustrated" that, although he has had good conversations with Putin over the phone, "they're not going anywhere."

Trump is "losing patience. He's losing the willingness to continue to wait for the Russian side to do something here, to end this war," Rubio said, adding that "there's no way Putin could have carried on this war without China's support, particularly through buying its oil."/ REL