Putin lashes at Ukraine after drones hit Moscow ---By Agence France-Presse

MOSCOW: Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday accused Kyiv of seeking to "frighten" his countrymen after drones hit high-rise buildings in Moscow in the first such attack since the beginning of his forces' invasion of Ukraine. As drones struck in and around Russia's capital, Moscow's drones targeted Kyiv for a third straight day while Ukraine gears up for a major counteroffensive against Russian forces. Officials said no one was seriously injured in Moscow, and there was only "minor" damage to residential buildings, but some locals said they never thought the capital could be hit in this way. "I somehow thought that all of this was somewhere far away, that this would not affect us, and suddenly this has become very close," pensioner Tatyana Kalinina told Agence France-Presse (AFP) in southwest Moscow, near one of the damaged residential buildings. Putin said Moscow's air defense had worked, referring to the attacks as Kyiv's "response" to a Russian strike on Ukraine's army intelligence headquarters. "The Kyiv regime chose a different path to frighten Russians," he added. The Russian Defense Ministry said eight drones were used in the attack, adding that five of them were shot down and three disabled. The country's Foreign Ministry blamed the West, saying its "support for the Kyiv regime is pushing the Ukrainian leadership toward increasingly reckless acts, including terrorism." One person was also killed on Tuesday in a Ukrainian bombardment on a center for displaced people in the southern border region of Belgorod, said Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov. Belgorod has, in recent weeks, been hit by dozens of strikes from across the border and seen attempted incursions from armed groups. Major embarrassment The United States said it did not support attacks inside Russia. "We have been focused on providing Ukraine with the equipment and training they need to retake their own sovereign territory," a US State Department spokesman said. Two drones crashed into high-rise residential buildings in Moscow's affluent southwest, while a third damaged a residential building in a suburb. The other drones fell outside Moscow. Some of the debris was found about 15 kilometers (9 miles) from Putin's Novo-Ogaryovo residence. One video shared on social media showed an explosion followed by a column of smoke rising into the sky. This month, two drones were intercepted over the Kremlin, but Tuesday's attacks were the first time that unmanned aerial vehicles hit residential areas of Moscow, hundreds of kilometers from the front lines in Ukraine. The raids are likely to be seen as a major embarrassment for the Kremlin, which has gone to great lengths to say the protracted conflict in Ukraine does not pose a threat to Russians. 'Not surprised' Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said Kyiv had "no direct relation" to the attacks. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said two people had sought medical assistance, but "no one has suffered serious injuries." The residents of buildings damaged in the strikes were briefly evacuated. On Profsoyuznaya Street, a residential building with a blown-out window was cordoned off by police, but the atmosphere was calm, with children playing outside and people walking their dogs, an AFP correspondent said. Some of the residents were moved to a nearby school, where they drank tea and watched a Soviet-era movie. Muscovites told Russian journalists that a drone had also crashed into an apartment on the 14th floor of a high-rise on Leninsky Prospekt, but did not explode. Predictably, many in Ukraine gloated over the drone attacks in Moscow. Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said Muscovites should feel "what it means to live in the conditions that Kyiv has lived in for the past one-and-a-half years."

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