Aug. 25 (UPI) -- Russia and Ukraine traded attacks early Friday with Russia claiming occupied Crimea came under attack from scores of fixed-wing drones and a missile targeting a region adjacent to Moscow while Kyiv said four cruise missiles and a UAV targeted the south of the country.
Russian air defenses detected 42 UAVs flying above Crimea of which 33 were suppressed by radio electronic warfare aids and crashed without reaching their target, the state-run Tass news agency reported the Russian Defense Ministry as saying which blamed the attack on Ukraine.
"Tonight, an attempt by the Kyiv regime to carry out terrorist attacks by aircraft-type unmanned aerial vehicles on the territory of the Russian Federation was thwarted," the ministry said
The ministry earlier said its air defense systems had shot down a Ukrainian long-range missile over Kaluga region to the southwest of Moscow region.
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No damage was caused and no one was hurt in the engagement above central Kaluga Region, regional governor Vladislav Shapsha wrote on social media Friday.
"At 12:30 a.m. today, air defense forces were in action in the Maloyaroslavetsky and Zhukovsky districts," wrote the governor, adding that the rocket was a modified S-200 surface-to-air missile.
Ukraine's air defenses successfully repelled an aerial assault launched from Russia's naval fleet shooting down two Kalibr cruise missiles, two KH-59 cruise missiles and a Iranian-built Shahed UAV, according to a Ministry of Defense post on Twitter shortly after 9 a.m. local time.
The two Kh-59 guided missiles were launched from warships in the Black Sea while the Kalibr missiles from a destroyer in the Sea of Azov were fired from Su-34 aircraft -- all in the direction of the southern regions of Odessa, Kherson, Mykolaiv and Kropyvnytskyi.
The UAV which was launched from the direction of Prymorsko-Akhtarsk was targeting Dnipro region.
The attacks came hours after Ukraine celebrated its Independence Day on Thursday by solemnly parading burnt-out Russian tanks along Kyiv's main thoroughfare in a defiant demonstration of the besieged nation's will to continue to resist the 18-month-long invasion by its neighbor.
Revelers also showed off captured and damaged Russian military hardware.
The "silent" parade featured 10 Russian tanks, 15 self-propelled artillery pieces, three anti-aircraft missile systems, six armored personnel carriers, three armored cars, two rocket artillery pieces, four infantry fighting vehicles, three light-tracked personnel carriers, and an R-77 air-to-air missile.
President Volodymyr Zelensky marked the day in understated observance, for the most part, but officials said about 20,000 people participated in events that were organized behind the scenes for fear they would become targets for Russian missile or drone strikes.
