Russia Watch

A senior Russian military colonel was killed in a car bombing outside Moscow after an explosive device planted under his BMW detonated near his home, according to local media reports.

Damir Davydov, described as the Kremlin’s top artillery chief, died after the blast erupted around 5:30 a.m. Tuesday near his home in Balashikha, a city just outside Moscow.

Surveillance footage shared by Russian media appeared to show the vehicle bursting into flames before slamming into a parked car.

Bystanders rushed to pull Davydov from the burning wreckage, but he later died from his injuries, Telegram channel Mash reported.

Russian Telegram channel 112 reported that the explosive device had been planted under the driver’s seat and detonated remotely.

The device reportedly had a yield equivalent to 300 to 400 grams of TNT.

A French fighter jet shot down a drone that entered NATO ally Latvia’s airspace from Russia on Monday, the latest security incident along Europe’s eastern border while Russia wages war on Ukraine.

NATO command ordered the shoot-down after it was determined that Russia had used electromagnetic warfare in the area, Latvian Defense Minister Raivis Melnis told reporters. The drone was brought down Monday morning near the village of Berzgale, roughly 20 miles from the border. No property damage or injuries were reported.

A Russian drone struck an apartment building in NATO-member Romania, its defence ministry said on Friday, wounding two people in a city near the Ukrainian border.

“During the night of May 28–29, the Russian Federation resumed drone attacks on civilian and infrastructure targets in Ukraine, near the river border with Romania,” the Romanian defence ministry said, condemning an “irresponsible escalation”.

“One of these drones entered Romanian airspace, was tracked by radar as far as the southern part of the city of Galati, and crashed onto the roof of an apartment building, with the impact triggering a fire,” it said.

Entire residential buildings were demolished in Ukraine’s capital as Russian launched a “massive and virtually nonstop” aerial barrage on Kyiv and other major cities over the last two nights, according to Ukrainian officials. They said more than 1,500 drones and over 50 missiles were launched in the last two days.

At least seven people were killed in Kyiv, many in a strike that leveled an apartment building overnight, while 20 more remain missing, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Zelenskyy said he had met with his top staff on Thursday about “a massive and virtually nonstop Russian attack that lasted nearly 48 hours.”

“This is a deliberate terrorist tactic by the Russians, who amassed drones and missiles over a period of time and intentionally calculated the strike so that its scale would be significant, creating the greatest possible difficulties for our air defense,” Zelenskyy wrote on X.