TOP HEADLINES

• Russia's air-defense forces thwarted a Ukraine drone attack on Moscow early on Monday, Russia's defense ministry said, adding that two drones were intercepted and destroyed. READ MORE BELOW

• The Kremlin denied on Monday that Russian forces had struck a cathedral in the Ukrainian city of Odesa and said, without providing evidence, that a rocket launched by Ukraine had hit it.

• The Russian government said on Monday that "increased vigilance" was needed after the Federal Security Service (FSB) alleged it had found traces of explosives on a ship travelling to Russia to pick up grain.

• Russia said it would press on with what it calls its "special military operation" in Ukraine and achieve all of its aims despite Ukrainian drone attacks on Russia.

• The Kremlin on Monday accused Kyiv of carrying out a "deliberate attack on journalists" in Ukraine's southeastern Zaporizhzhia region, in which a reporter for the Russian state news agency RIA was killed. Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on Monday that Moscow needed to broaden the range of targets it strikes in Ukraine.

• Russia destroyed Ukrainian grain warehouses on the Danube River and wounded six people in a drone attack on Monday.

• A previously-announced meeting of a new NATO-Ukraine Council, expected to address Black Sea security, has been scheduled for Wednesday, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address on Sunday. 

IN DEPTH

Russia accuses Kyiv of "terrorism" after Moscow drone attacks

Russia accused Kyiv of "terrorism," saying that two Ukrainian drones had damaged buildings in Moscow, including one close to the Defense Ministry's headquarters on Monday, a day after Ukraine promised payback for Russian strikes on Odesa.

Nobody was reported hurt in the attack, but one of its targets - close to the Moscow building where the Russian military holds briefings on what it calls its "special military operation" - struck a symbolic blow and underscored the reach of such drones.

Roads nearby were temporarily closed, windows on the top two floors of an office building struck by the second drone in another Moscow district were blown out, and debris was scattered on the ground, a Reuters reporter who saw the aftermath of the incident said.

"I was asleep and was woken up by a blast, everything started shaking," Polina, a young woman who lives near the high-rise building, told Reuters.

The attack, though not serious in terms of its human cost or damage, was the most high-profile of its kind since two drones reached the Kremlin in May.

A swarm of 17 drones also launched attacks overnight in Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014, the Russian Defense Ministry said, adding it had used anti-drone equipment and air defenses to bring them down.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who rarely comments on attacks inside Russia or on Russian-controlled territory, had on Sunday promised what he called "a retaliation to Russian terrorists for Odesa."

That was a reference to days of Russian missile strikes against targets in the port city which Moscow says are payback for a Ukrainian attack last week on the Crimean Bridge.

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