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Putin’s Humiliating Crisis Intensifies in Deadly Drone Strike

Three dead in Moscow region as Putin’s air defenses fail to plug the gaps in the city’s defenses.

Three people were killed and five injured when Ukrainian drones hit areas around the Russian capital overnight.

HEARTLAND HIT

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The governor of the Moscow region, Andrei Vorobyov, claimed air defense units downed 81 drones over the city during the night, as reported by the Independent.

Ukraine has struck all 10 of Russia’s biggest refineries, including the largest, in the Siberian city of Omsk, some 1,500 miles from the front line. Independent Russian outlet Agentstvo estimates roughly 85 percent of the country’s refining capacity now sits within drone range.

But President Vladimir Putin appears to have no fix for the Ukrainian onslaught. His answer to the strikes has been a promise to ramp up production of air-defense systems—an admission, in effect, that he does not have enough of them now. Every battery guarding a refinery is a battery not guarding somewhere else.

“There are simply many more drones at one target now than before, physically punching through the defenses, like a medieval cavalry wedge,” a senior Russian energy executive told the Financial Times. “The defenses that used to work cannot sustain such pressure. This is the new normal.”

The shortages have hit roughly 50 million people, about a third of the population—the worst supply failure the country has experienced since communism ended. Waits at gas stations in some regions have run to several days, raising concerns about public disorder.

OILING POINT

Putin’s Nightmare Deepens After Humiliating Strikes

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Last Thursday, Ukrainian drones set two oil tankers ablaze in the Sea of Azov and torched depots at Tver and in the Stavropol region. Drone attacks have since forced Russia to halt shipping in the Sea of Azov entirely, according to the Independent.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, 48, has called the strikes “long-range sanctions.”

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“We have long proposed that Russia end this war, and every day of delay should bring the feeling of war to where it all began—to Russia,” he said.

Kyiv has its own shortfall. Western allies meet in Paris on Monday to try to lock down further air-defense commitments, with Ukraine exposed to Russian ballistic missiles despite gains on the battlefield.

President Donald Trump told Zelensky last week at last week’s NATO summit that the U.S. would license Ukraine to build its own Patriot systems—though a Ukrainian defense official warned homegrown interceptors could be a year or more away.

Asked by Trump whether he might be willing to attend peace talks in Moscow, Zelensky replied, only half-joking, that it might be too dangerous because “there are a lot of Ukrainian drones there.”

How and when this long war will end are matters for debate. Sir Bill Browder, an American-born British financier, prominent anti-corruption activist, and one of Putin’s most vocal global adversaries, told the Independent’s World of Trouble podcast: “I don’t believe you are ever going to have Putin signing a peace treaty.

“I don’t think the war is ever going to end officially, but I can imagine it is going to grind down to a low level, potentially even totally quiet front, in the same way as North and South Korea did.”

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Tom LatchemLead Global Correspondent

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