russia. putin was not in the kremlin at the time and ukraine strongly denies any involvement. a short time ago attacks on ukrainian cities including odesa, kerrherson and a kyiv. one of the drones shot down have the words for the kremlin and for moscow written on them. nic robertson is live for us. what have we learned? reporter: president zelenskyy has set absolutely we do into the attack putin, we do not attack moscow, we defend our own villages, we re struggling with ammunition, so flat out denial coming from ukrainians. overnight of course concerns how would moscow respond to what essentially appears to be completely trumped up allegation that they tried to assassinate president putin. according to one ukrainian official, biggest flight of uav attack drones and missiles that they have seen so far this year, all of them shot down, debris falling in the city. and in the south odesa 15 attack drones fired or sent to that region. 12 of them shot down. three of them landing
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
happening now, ukraine marks one full year of bloodshed and brutality at the hands of russian forces. president zelenskyy defiant saying victory is inevitable. i ll speak one on one with the ukrainian ambassador to the united states. also tonight, breaking news, the prosecution rests in the alex murdaugh murder trial after two days of dramatic cross-examination. did the jury buy his story about why he lied to police on the night of the killings? welcome to our viewers in the united states and around the world. wolf blitzer is off today. i m brianna keilar and you re the situation room. we begin our coverage with the latest on russia s war against ukraine officially one year old from kyiv to moscow, cnn s correspondents are covering the conflict from every angle as the war enters the second year. let s get to clarissa ward. president zelenskyy is talking to reporter and has a speech. what s the mood on the ground following remarks? reporter: i think there is provocat
russia says that it was a specific type of drone that is in the ukrainian arsenal. and ukraine does actually have armed drones that can fly that far. i mean something like more than 500 miles from kyiv to moscow. but only about 300 miles from the ukrainian border to the russian capital. so technically it could have been ukraine. there was a 12 hour delay between the attacks and russia s official response. could have been during that time that they were scrambling to figure out how do we explain something that breached our security perimeter as red square was mostly closed in preparations for russia s victory parade on may 9. and the result was as we all saw this announcement that ukraine was trying to kill the russian president. sort of a rhetorical response that gives russia more of an excuse to step up attacks and of
a lot of forensics needs to take place, but there are a number of questions that come from this. it is about 500 miles from kyiv to moscow. let s say those drones were launched from ukraine, we certainly don t so this is a big assumption on our part. what was that says a lot about the russian air defense capabilities if you ve got drones that are on their way to moscow and they are able to get all the way into the city limits and are in a position to potentially threaten the life of putin. or to do some type of damage. another assumption, another question that comes out of all of this, was this a kill strike or was this a collection strike. were they looking for more intelligence or were they truly trying to get after and do a decapitation of putin? there are a ton of questions that come from all of this. what we are saying and what both of the nick s just described is the backdrop of all of this. clearly it leads to escalatory action on the part of the