Russian Opposition Leader Wounded by Drone Attack in the Kyiv Region

In the early morning of Aug. 1, Russian oppositionist Ilya Ponomarev was injured when his residence was hit by debris from a Russian drone brought down by Kyiv air defenses, he announced on his page on X (formerly Twitter).

Ilya Ponomarev

Ponomarev is a former Russian politician and entrepreneur, a deputy of the Russian State Duma of the 5th and 6th convocations, as well as a member of the Just Russia political party.

On March 20, 2014, during the vote in Russia’s State Duma (its legislature) regarding the annexation of Crimea, Ponomarev was the only one of 450 deputies who voted against it.

Later, the former deputy left Russia and went to the US, and in 2016 the State Duma prematurely deprived Ponomarev of his powers as a deputy.

In 2019, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko granted him Ukrainian citizenship. In his post, he said the occasion was like his second birthday.

“The fifth attempted attack was the most unconventional and the most successful, against which it was difficult to defend,“ Ponomarev said.

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Night raid of Shahed UAVs

The Ukrainian Air Force said that Russia launched Iskander-M ballistic missiles from the Voronezh region in Russia and in Russian-occupied Crimea, as well as Shahed attack UAVs from Cape Chauda (Crimea) and Kursk (Russia) overnight.

The radio engineering troops detected and “escorted“ seven Shahed drones using electronic warfare equipment and techniques.

“All were shot down by anti-aircraft defense in Kyiv region, Poltava region, Kherson region and Dnipropetrovsk region,“ the Air Force added.

The Kyiv Regional Military Administration reported that a man and a woman were injured because of falling fragments of neutralized drones, and they have already been taken to the hospital.

So far, the officials reported damage to two private houses in one of the suburbs of the Kyiv region. The roofs and facades of both buildings were sheared off, and multiple windows and doors were broken.