Amid fears of Ukrainian drones, Putin cancels Russia's Navy Day parade for 1st time

For the first time, Russian leader Vladimir Putin cancelled the Navy Day parade in his hometown of St Petersburg.

The Navy Day is a Russian national holiday that celebrates the Russian Navy, which has suffered embarrassing defeats in the Black Sea in the war with Ukraine throughout the conflict, including the sinking of its Black Sea fleet's flagship Moskva . It is celebrated on the last Sunday of July, which fell on July 27 this year.

The Kremlin confirmed that the Navy Day parade was cancelled “on security grounds”.

The cancellation comes amid fears in Russia about Ukraine’s drone capabilities, which has been demonstrated in repeated strikes deep inside the country. Earlier in June, Ukraine struck multiple bases deep inside Russia and destroyed a third of Russian long-range bomber and surveillance fleets . Since then, Ukraine has also repeatedly struck Russia’s weapons production, energy, and weapon storage sites with drones.

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While the main parade of warships was to be held in St Petersburg, smaller parades were also to be held in Kaliningrad region in the Baltic and Vladivostok in the far-east, according to the Associated Press. All of these parades were cancelled.

After the parade’s cancellation, Putin visited the navy headquarters in St Petersburg and reviewed the four-day ‘July Storm’ military exercise that involved more than 150 warships from the Baltics to the Pacific, as per the news agency.

Putin also visited the Admiral Grigorovich frigate of the Baltic Fleet at the Kronstadt naval near St Petersburg and hailed its crew for fending off a Ukrainian drone attack in the region earlier in the day, the report said.