{"id":259784,"date":"2025-12-31T12:23:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-31T12:23:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/259784\/"},"modified":"2025-12-31T12:23:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-31T12:23:07","slug":"putin-home-attack-claim-a-distraction-says-kallas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/259784\/","title":{"rendered":"Putin home attack claim a &#8216;distraction&#8217;, says Kallas"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Russia&#8217;s claim that Ukraine \u2060recently attacked key governmental sites in Russia is a &#8220;deliberate distraction&#8221;, \u200dEuropean Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas has said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Moscow aims to derail real progress towards peace by Ukraine and its \u2060Western partners,&#8221; Ms Kallas wrote \u2060X.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;No one should \u2060accept \u200dunfounded \u2060claims from the aggressor who has \u200dindiscriminately targeted \u2060Ukraine&#8217;s infrastructure and civilians since the start of the war,&#8221; she \u200dadded.<\/p>\n<p>Her comments come after Russia&#8217;s defence ministry published a video of a downed drone that it says Ukraine launched at President Vladimir Putin&#8217;s residence in north-west Russia this week &#8211; a claim Ukraine has denied as a &#8220;lie.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Russia has called it a &#8220;terrorist attack&#8221; and a &#8220;personal attack&#8221; against Mr Putin, saying it will toughen its negotiation stance in Ukraine war talks.<\/p>\n<p>Russia made the allegation shortly after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky held talks with US President Donald Trump in Florida.<\/p>\n<p>Ukraine called the allegation it a &#8220;fabrication&#8221; intended to &#8220;manipulate&#8221; the peace process.<\/p>\n<p>The video, shot at night in the dark, showed a damaged drone lying in snow in a forested area. The ministry said the alleged attack was &#8220;targeted, carefully planned and carried out in stages.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Russia has not said where Mr Putin was at the time, saying the attack was launched on the night of 28-29 December at Mr Putin&#8217;s home in the Novgorod region. His residences are normally shrouded in secrecy.<\/p>\n<p>The defence ministry said the attack started around 7pm local time on 28 December and was a &#8220;mass&#8221; drone launch at Mr Putin&#8217;s residence, but said his home was not damaged.<\/p>\n<p>It also published a video with a man it called a witness, saying he was a local villager from the settlement of Roshchino.<\/p>\n<p><b><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rte.ie\/news\/ukraine\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Latest Ukraine stories<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n<p>Elsewhere, Russian strikes wounded six people in Odesa including three children, the Ukrainian city&#8217;s military administration has said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Drones attacked the residential, logistical, and energy infrastructure of our region,&#8221; Odesa&#8217;s military administration regional head Oleg Kiper said on Telegram.<\/p>\n<p>Two children aged eight and 14 were wounded in the attack, as well as a seven-month-old baby, Sergiy Lysak, head of the city&#8217;s military administration, said in a separate Telegram post.<\/p>\n<p>A 42-year-old man was also wounded and is in &#8220;serious condition&#8221;, he added. In his latest update he put the overall toll at six.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Lysak said residential, logistical, and energy infrastructure was targeted. Parts of Odesa lost heating and water supplies.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Screengrab from a video showing a damaged building in odesa, ukraine\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/0023aee4-614.jpg\"\/><br \/>\nA number of people were injured in the overnight strikes on Odesa<\/p>\n<p>Elsewhere Russian drones wounded two men in the Dnipropetrovsk region, its military administration head Vladyslav Gaivanenko said on Telegram.<\/p>\n<p>In Russia meanwhile, two people were wounded in a drone attack on Tuapse in the Krasnodar Krai region, municipal leader Sergei Boiko said in a Telegram post.<\/p>\n<p>The attack damaged a port berth and equipment at an oil refinery as well as homes.<\/p>\n<p>Munitions strikes left three people wounded in the Belgorod region, its governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said on Telegram.<\/p>\n<p>US President Donald Trump said on Sunday that a deal was closer than ever to end Russia&#8217;s invasion of Ukraine but reported no apparent breakthrough on the flashpoint issue of territory after new talks with the Mr Zelensky and Mr Putin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Russia&#8217;s claim that Ukraine \u2060recently attacked key governmental sites in Russia is a &#8220;deliberate distraction&#8221;, \u200dEuropean Union foreign&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":259785,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[9,10,13,14,6,11,12,15,16,5,7,8,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-259784","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-featured-news","11":"tag-featurednews","12":"tag-headlines","13":"tag-latest-news","14":"tag-latestnews","15":"tag-main-news","16":"tag-mainnews","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-top-stories","19":"tag-topstories","20":"tag-world","21":"tag-world-news","22":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115814164312295585","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259784"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259784\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/259785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}