war in the sky
Ukraine shoots down its own defective drone over Kiev – Kasparov speculates about the Kremlin incident
A Bayraktar drone in Ukraine
© ddp images
Air alert in Kyiv. A drone of the own forces got out of control and was attacked by the air defense. Meanwhile, there are new speculations about the incident at the Kremlin.
The Ukrainian air force shot down its own, suspected defective drone over Kiev. “Around 8:00 p.m. (7:00 p.m. CEST) an unmanned Bayraktar TB2 drone lost control during a scheduled flight in the Kiev region…the target was destroyed,” the Air Force said on Thursday evening. There was probably a technical error. The Ukrainian capital had previously been rocked by several explosions.
At the time of the explosions, AFP journalists saw a drone trying to shoot down Ukrainian air defenses. The city’s military administration said air defenses were deployed over Kiev. A plume of black smoke hung over the city as the military administration said the air alert had ended.
Kiev Mayor Vitali Klitschko said firefighters extinguished a fire on the ground floor of a four-storey shopping center in Solomjansky district. It burned in an area of 50 square meters. Information about victims is not available.
Garry Kasparov: Drone incident not a Russian staging
Meanwhile, speculation about Wednesday’s alleged drone attack on the Kremlin continues. The Russian government critic and former weak world champion Garry Kasparow (60) assumes that the incident on the Kremlin premises in Moscow is not a Russian staging. “I doubt the popular version that it was a KGB provocation. I have no problem imagining the KGB creating fake events to arouse popular anger, but that’s the wrong aim,” he said he in an interview with the German Press Agency in Gmund am Tegernsee.
The KGB was the Soviet secret service, from which today’s domestic secret service FSB and the foreign service SWR emerged. “Against the background of the war, an attack on Putin’s Kremlin would be interpreted by the Russians as weakness,” said Kasparov. Although he only has the information he got from the media and could be wrong, he believes that the incident at the Russian center of power is more like a “message from Ukraine: watch out, we can reach you.”
Kasparov became famous as a chess genius and in 1985, at just 22 years old, became the youngest world chess champion in history. After the end of his chess career, the son of a German-Jewish father and an Armenian made a name for himself as a sharp critic of the Kremlin. He was a co-founder of several opposition alliances, campaigns, organizations and parties and is now considered one of the leading Russian opposition figures. He lives in exile in New York.