LAST UPDATE | 6 May 2023
UKRAINE HAS SAID that it has for the first time downed a Russian hypersonic Kinzhal missile during a wave of Russian attacks in the night between last Wednesday and Thursday.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, who unveiled the Kinzhal missile in 2018, has termed it “an ideal weapon” that is extremely difficult for missile defences to intercept.
“I congratulate the Ukrainian people on the historic event,” General Mykola Oleshchuk said on Telegram. “Yes, we shot down the ‘unparallelled’ Kinzhal” missile.
The Ukraine Air Force said the missile was shot down with a Patriot air-defence system in skies over Kyiv at around 2:30am local time on Thursday.
Ukraine appealed to its Western allies to help reinforce its air defence system as Russia pounded Ukraine energy infrastructure from the air over winter.
Ukraine received the first Patriots in mid-April, seen as one of the most advanced US air defence systems.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said the system would “significantly” strengthen Ukraine’s defences against Russian strikes.
Meanwhile, a prominent pro-Kremlin writer and Russian nationalist has been injured in a car “explosion” and one other person was killed, Russia’s interior ministry said, after a string of recent drone attacks there amid the fighting in Ukraine.
Investigators said Ukraine was behind the explosion, which they called an “assassination attempt” on pro-Kremlin writer Zakhar Prilepin, one of Russia’s best-known novelists.
Prilepin is a vocal supporter of Moscow’s offensive in Ukraine, where he fought alongside pro-Russian separatists in 2014.
He been a frequent visitor to pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine since the start of the conflict in April 2014.
“During the interrogation (the suspect) testified that he acted on the instructions from the Ukrainian special services,” said Russia’s investigative committee, which looks into major crimes.
Ukrainian presidential aide Mykhaylo Podolyak reacted by likening Putin’s regime to a god that “devours his enemies … and finally devours his own”, which implied the blast was due to Russian infighting.
The investigative committee published images of a partly destroyed, overturned car and said the writer had been taken to a medical facility.
A video released by the interior ministry earlier showed the suspect in handcuffs, wearing a khaki cap and a black hoodie.
Shortly after the blast, and without providing evidence, Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova accused Ukraine and the West.
“Washington and NATO fed another international terrorist cell – the Kyiv regime,” Zakharova said on Telegram.
She said the blast was the “direct responsibility of the United States and Britain”.
After the start of the full-scale offensive in 2022, Prilepin was in a group of pro-Kremlin figures that launched what they dubbed a fight against the “anti-state position” of Russia’s cultural elite.
They demanded the resignation of some cultural figures over what they said were unpatriotic positions.
There were two previous killings of nationalists which Russia has blamed on Ukraine.
The explosion is the latest in a series of apparent attacks and sabotage operations that Russia has blamed on Ukraine, ahead the popular celebrations of the Soviet victory over the Nazis on 9 May.
No-one has claimed responsibility for most of the alleged attacks but the Kremlin has generally blamed Ukraine or the West, rarely providing evidence.
Experts say they could be in preparation for a Ukrainian offensive.
In the most spectacular incidents, Russian authorities claim to have thwarted a drone attack on the Kremlin this week.
Russia claims the United States masterminded that alleged attack and that Ukraine carried it out with two drones, aiming to kill President Vladimir Putin. Both denied the charges.
On Thursday, a drone was shot down near an airbase in Sevastopol in the Crimean peninsula, annexed by Russia in 2014.
The same day, Russia’s southern regions of Krasnodar and Rostov, both near Ukraine, reported drone strikes that caused fires. On Friday, another fire broke out at the same Krasnodar oil refinery.
On Saturday, the Moscow-appointed governor of Crimea, Sergei Aksyonov, said Russian forces had downed a Ukrainian missile over the peninsula, amid speculations of a counter-offensive.
On the Ukrainian side, six Ukrainian emergency workers were killed by Russian fire while demining in the southern region of Kherson on Saturday.
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