(MOSCOW) — In what is one of the largest drone attacks since the Russia-Ukraine war began, Moscow officials said they shot down at least 12 drones on Wendesday.
The Air Defense Forces of the Ministry of Defense shot down 10 UAVs Tuesday night and two more Wednesday morning, local time, according to Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin.
It was not clear how many drones and missiles were launched in total. Unverified videos published online showed explosions in the sky over Russia. Sobyanin said some of the drones were destroyed in the region surrounding Moscow, brought down by the city’s layered air defense.
Russian authorities said that around 60 more drones were launched into Russia. Ukrainian authorities have not yet commented on the attack.
(LONDON) — The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) on Tuesday published its report into President Joe Biden’s troubled aid pier in the Gaza Strip, blaming a combination of weather and security challenges for its failures.
The Pentagon abandoned aid deliveries in July with the pier having faced repeated logistical and security issues since it began sending supplies ashore in mid-May. The project cost an estimated $230 million, USAID noted. Three American troops suffered non-combat injuries during its operation.
USAID’s report said that the pier — officially called the Joint Logistics Over-the-Shore system, or JLOTS — was only able to operate for 20 days over its lifespan, far short of the 90 or so days planned.
The project was controversial from its inception. Before Biden announced the planned pier in his State of the Union address on Mar. 7, “multiple USAID staff expressed concerns that the focus on using JLOTS would detract from the agency’s advocacy for opening land crossings,” the report said.
Land crossings “were seen as more efficient and proven methods of transporting aid into Gaza,” it continued. “However, once the president issued the directive, the agency’s focus was to use JLOTS as effectively as possible.”
The concerns proved prescient and the agency acknowledged it “fell short of its goal of supplying aid to 500,000 or more Palestinians each month for three months and instead delivered enough aid to feed 450,000 for one month.”
“External factors” were to blame, it said, which “impaired USAID’s efforts to distribute humanitarian assistance to Gaza.”
These included Pentagon and Israel Defense Forces (IDF) security requirements which forced the pier to be positioned further from Gaza City than requested by the United Nations World Food Program (WFP), which partnered with the administration on the project.
“A northern location would have enabled WFP to avoid the south-to-north land route where it had previously faced delays at IDF checkpoints as well as ‘self-distribution’ or looting of the aid,” the report said.
USAID noted “structural damage caused by rough weather and high seas” along with “security and access challenges” that “plagued aid distributions once on shore” contributed to ongoing issues.
“Overcrowded roads and limited safe, passable land routes also created significant challenges to moving aid from JLOTS to UN warehouses for distribution, including several instances where aid trucks were looted,” the report continued.
The fluctuating security situation in Gaza complicated the USAID mission, the agency said. On June 9, for example, the WFP suspended aid deliveries due to “security concerns and community misperceptions from disinformation that the pier had been used to assist the IDF in a military operation to free several hostages.”
The agency also reported difficulty in adjusting aid routes in a bid to minimize looting after the first two days of deliveries, during which “crowds improperly removed humanitarian aid from 12 of 26 WFP trucks.”
“WFP subsequently identified alternative routes to safely transport aid,” the report said. “However, Israeli authorities delayed approving new routes from the pier to the UN warehouse and prevented WFP from transporting additional aid from JLOTS for two more days.”
(PARIS) — WNBA star Brittney Griner, who spent 10 months detained in Russia, said she is “head over heels” after the release of Americans Evan Gershkovich and Paul Whelan, who were freed from Russia in a prisoner swap.
“Great day,” Griner said from Paris, where she is competing in women’s basketball for Team USA at the Olympics. “I’m head-over-heels happy for the families right now. Any day that Americans come home, that’s a win.”
Griner, who spoke to reporters after the U.S. women beat Belgium 87-74 to advance to the quarterfinals, said finding out about their release was “definitely emotional.”
“I’m sure it will be even more emotional a little later on. Yeah, I’m just happy. This was a big win. Huge win,” Griner said.
“I know they have an amazing group of people that are going to help them out — them and their families,” she said, adding that she was “glad” to receive that help herself to “get reacclimated into everyday life.”
In February 2022, while returning to Russia to play basketball during the WNBA’s offseason, Griner was detained at Russia’s Sheremetyevo International Airport after she was accused of having vape cartridges containing cannabis oil, which is illegal in the country. The State Department said she was wrongfully detained.
In July 2022, Griner pleaded guilty to drug charges, saying that the vape cartridges containing cannabis oil were in her luggage unintentionally. She testified that she had “no intention” of breaking Russian law and packed the cartridges by accident.
The WNBA star was released in December 2022 after U.S. officials agreed to swap her for convicted Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout.
Griner told “Good Morning America” co-anchor Robin Roberts earlier this year she expected to also see Whelan there when she was boarding the plane to leave Russia.
“When I walked on and I didn’t see him, I was like, ‘OK, maybe I’m early. Maybe he’s next. Maybe they are going to bring him next,'” she said of Whelan. “And when they closed the door, I was like … are you seriously not gonna let this man come home right now?”
“If it was left up to me in that trade, I would have went and got Paul and brought him home,” Griner said.
After her release, Griner became an advocate for Americans wrongfully detained abroad.
Whelan, a former U.S. Marine, was arrested in 2018 and accused of espionage. Both the Biden and Trump administrations denied the allegation against Whelan. He was convicted on the charges in 2020 and sentenced to 16 years in prison.
Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter, was arrested by Russian authorities in 2023 for espionage, a charge he and U.S. officials flatly deny, with President Joe Biden saying he was targeted for being a journalist and an American. After an unusually hasty trial that played out behind closed doors, Gershkovich was found guilty and sentenced to 16 years in a high-security penal colony.
Two others unjustly imprisoned in Russia, Alsu Kurmasheva and Vladimir Kara-Murza, were also released in Thursday’s swap, Biden said.
ABC News’ Ahmad Hemingway contributed to this report.
(KYIV, Ukraine) — Nearly 200,000 people are being evacuated following one of the largest Ukrainian attacks on Russian territory, Russian officials said Wednesday.
The overnight strikes marked the biggest combined attack on Russia’s air force infrastructure since the start of the full-scale war, with three Russian military airfields targeted, sources in the Security Service of Ukraine told ABC News.
Russian air defense forces destroyed 117 Ukrainian drones and four Tochka-U missiles over eight regions of Russia overnight, including in Kursk, Voronezh, Belgorod and Nizhny Novgorod, the Russian Ministry of Defense said in a statement.
Local authorities did not confirm the airfields were attacked.
A state of emergency has been declared in the Belgorod region due to “daily Ukrainian attacks,” Belgorod Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov said Wednesday morning.
Nearly 194,000 people are going to be evacuated from the Kursk and Belgorod regions due to the Ukrainian military offensive, according to Russian outlets.
The last time Russians fled en masse from fighting inside the country was during the decadelong Second Chechen War, which started in 1999, according to the independent Russian outlet Agentstvo.
The overnight assault comes more than a week into Ukraine’s major incursion into Russia.
Ukraine’s top commander said Wednesday that Ukraine has advanced again inside Russia’s Kursk region as it continues to try to expand its unprecedented incursion there.
Ukrainian Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi briefed President Volodymyr Zelenskyy that Ukrainian troops had advanced about 1 mile in different directions inside Kursk. Syrskyi also said Ukrainian forces had completed search-and-destroy operations for Russian forces still in Sudzha, the main border town from which Ukrainian forces have been expanding their bridgehead inside Russia, implying Ukraine now has full control over it.
Some Russian pro-Kremlin military blogger accounts in their latest reports gave similar pictures, suggesting Ukrainian forces had continued to consolidate their gains and were still pushing to expand their zone of control, though without any major advances.
“Unfortunately, for now the situation remains tough. The enemy for now still has the initiative and so, even if slowly, he is continuing to increase his presence in the Kursk region,” one military blogger, Yury Podolyak, wrote on his Telegram channel.
The blogger account Rybar, which is linked to Russia’s military, wrote the situation was “stabilizing” but nonetheless reported multiple efforts by Ukraine to break through Russian positions and intense fighting.
Ukraine continues to try to push in multiple directions from Sudzha. Ukrainian troops are still attempting to flank the village of Korenevo, which would allow them to move toward a key highway. Ukrainian troops are also reported to still be attempting to press north toward Lgov, a town closer to the Kursk nuclear power station, though for now they appear to remain at least 12 miles away.
Podolyak wrote that Ukraine has adapted its tactics, beginning to stop trying to make rapid advances with small columns of armored vehicles and instead was attempting larger, more consolidated assaults.
All indications are Ukraine is still on the attack in the Kursk region and Russian troops are battling hard to hold them back.
ABC News’ Tanya Stukalova contributed to this report.