Ilya Ponomarev published on social media a photograph of himself covered in blood and bruises after the drone attack
The Telegraph: A former Russian MP who defected to Ukraine has accused the Kremlin of trying to kill him in a drone attack on his house in Kyiv.
Ilya Ponomarev published a photograph of himself covered in blood and bruises after the night drone attack, which Ukrainian media said struck just outside his front door.
“Today seems to be my second birthday. The fifth attack attempt was the most unconventional and the most successful and difficult to defend against. But to hell with them,” he said in a post on social media.
More photographs showed extensive damage to Mr Ponomarev’s three-storey house on the edge of Kyiv. All the windows of the house appear to have been blown out. Debris from the ripped roof and destroyed balconies litter the foreground.
Mr Ponomarev was an opposition MP in Russia and renowned as being the only lawmaker to vote against the annexation of Crimea in 2014. He said that he was forced to leave the country shortly after the vote.
He moved to Kyiv in 2019 and has been a vocal opponent of the war, helping to set up in 2022 an anti-Kremlin Free Russia Legion – a unit of Russians who fight for the Ukrainian army. They have staged several cross-border attacks into Russia’s southern Belgorod region since the start of the invasion.
The drone struck the road outside the front door of Mr Ponomarev's house in Kyiv
The Ukrainian Air Force said Russia had attacked Ukraine with seven drones on Wednesday evening. It said: “All of them were shot down by anti-aircraft defence in the Kyiv region, Poltava region, Kherson region and Dnipropetrovsk region.”
The Kyiv city authorities said at least two people had been injured by falling debris from the drone attacks.
The windows of Mr Ponomarev's house appear to have been blown out by the drone strike while the roof and balconies were also damaged
The Kremlin has denounced Mr Ponomarev as a traitor and accused him of participating in a terrorist organisation and disseminating fakes about the Russian army.
Russian agents have been linked with multiple assassination plots in Ukraine over the past decade, including against Volodymyr Zelensky which the Ukraine security services have claimed credit for foiling.
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