By Gleb Bryanski
MOSCOW (Reuters) – Ukrainian drones targeted St. Petersburg on Sunday, forcing the airport to close for five hours, although Vladimir Putin marked Russia’s naval date in the city due to security concerns, despite earlier naval parades.
St. Petersburg usually holds large-scale televised naval parades on Naval Day, including a warship and fleet of warships sailing along the Neva River, attended by Putin.
Last year, Russia suspected Ukraine planned to attack the city, according to state television.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed on Sunday that the march has been cancelled due to security reasons, after it was canceled in early July.
Putin arrived at the city’s historic naval headquarters on Sunday in a patrol ship, from where he followed exercises of more than 150 ships and 15,000 military personnel involving the Pacific and Arctic oceans as well as the Baltic and Caspian Seas.
“Today, we marked this holiday in our work environment and we are checking the fleet’s combat preparations,” Putin said in the video address.
The Russian Defense Ministry said air defense forces defeated a total of 291 Ukrainian fixed-wing drones on Sunday, down from the record 524 drones attacked on May 7, following a May 9 parade on Victory Day.
Alexander Drozdenko, governor of the Leningrad region around St. Petersburg, said more than a dozen drones in the area were knocked down and debris fell, hurting a woman. Drozdenko said the attack was repelled at 0840 GMT on Sunday.
A statement said that in the attack, St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo Airport was closed, delaying 57 flights and 22 flights to other airports. Pulkovo resumed operations later on Sunday.
Russian blogger Alexander Yunashev, part of a formal journalist team traveling with Peskov, said Peskov told him that their flight from Moscow to Moscow to St. Petersburg was postponed for two hours by a drone attack.
(Other reports by Anton Kolodyazhnyy; Edited by Alexandra Hudson)
