After days of Ukraine’s threats of violence against the heads of many nations coming to Moscow to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the victory over the Nazis, last night, Ukraine’s acting president Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated, according to Ukrainska Pravda: “And it is entirely fair that the Russian sky—the sky of the aggressor—is not calm either today.” According to the Russian military, 20 Ukrainian drones had been destroyed around Moscow airports, while 60,000 passengers had 350 flights cancelled or rerouted.
While 29 leaders of nations are scheduled to attend, special actions were reserved for two European leaders, Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vučić and Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico. Both Latvia and Lithuania denied the routine permission to use their airspace for the planes carrying the two leaders to Moscow. Vučić arrived yesterday and reported that he had had to take a circuitous route through Bulgaria, Türkiye, Azerbaijan, and Georgia; and that Kiev’s drone assault caused an extra delay, as he “barely got permission from the Russian authorities to fly over.”
