russian state media is reporting that two ukrainian drones were flown toward the kremlin last night. again, this is coming from the state-controlled russian media with absolutely no verification at all from the ukrainians or anyone else for that matter, and there are a variety of reasons why a russian claim like this would be advantageous to them which we will get into in a bit. and russia is calling this, though, a terrorist attack and also claiming that it was an attempt to assassinate russian president vladimir putin. we have team coverage on this breaking news for you. nic robertson is in eastern ukraine, nick paton walsh is in dnipro, ukraine, and major general james spider marks is joining us as well. let s start with nic robertson. what else are you picking up? reporter: well, what we re hearing from the ukrainians is they re down playing this, saying this is a trick to be expected from our opponents. they re saying that russia is trying to use this event or purp
Victory day parade this time around? reporter: i think there are several things at play here. number one is they ve got a lot of men and material committed to the front. we know that the may day parades in some towns in the country have been scaled back significantly or even effectively canceled. i think it s very significant that russia isn t using its aircraft which normally perform a service slow fly by over moscow over the center of moscow, over the kremlin during those may 9th celebrations. remember this is the other point that i think is worth folding in and thinking about when we think about these may the 9th victory day celebrations. it s all about the tragic and huge loss of life, tens of millions of russians lost their lives fighting in the second world war. so for putin to have this parade and make it big and make the day big that is commemorating this
Own citizens in being punished by these decisions, and having them pay more at the pump. so, this is a decision that s been taken very carefully at its one that was done with the knowledge that we want to give an off ramp to vladimir putin. so, that s one of the things that was considered so all this being done as we saw first lady, jill dr. jill biden, visiting ukraine for mother s day with her counterpart the wife of volodymyr zelenskyy, all of this flurry of diplomacy today, and their celebrations tomorrow. let s get into that, you brought it up there this may 9th victory day celebrations can be happening inside russia. what can we expect from them, and you think there s gonna be any change in those celebrations because of these new sanctions now leveled against russia? now, i don t know the sanctions themselves are gonna have an effect on may 9th celebrations. remember of course the
During the may 9th celebrations in russia. i want to ask you this. these people, hundreds of civilians have been holed up in that plant for weeks now. we had nick paton walsh on earlier. 6 month old baby. a third of the baby s life hiding underground. there were calls for humanitarian corridors, there were calls for rescue plans, internationally supervised rescue plans for the civilians and the fighters. did the west fail here? yes. i think the united nations and the red cross failed to save those people that are currently bombed in azovstal. well, we re seeing, i think, that baby there that we were talking about a third of its life underground. what does that say going forward because the russian invasion is not over. there s the potential that russia surrounds other civilians in other cities and we know that they now control other cities
Off any remaining peace talks, and now, mariupol would be a major one for vladimir putin and a chance for him to change the narrative after the sinking of the moskov and a victory ahead of the may 9th celebrations in russia that we talked about when they hold a military parade to mark the end of the second world war and strategically it would allow a land bridge between crimea which he annexed in 2014 and the separatist republics way out in the east of the country. the situation for civilians in mariupol, almost unimaginable. the mayor says at least 10,000 have been killed. the final toll may be much, much higher than that. there is almost no food, people have been drinking filthy water to survive. and an adviser to the mayor is saying, russian forces are now setting up checkpoints around the city, no one allowed in, no one allowed out, and men going through those checkpoints are being interrogated.