Drones struck inside Russia’s border with Ukraine Tuesday in the second day of attacks exposing the vulnerability of some of Moscow’s most important military sites, observers said.

Ukrainian officials did not formally confirm carrying out drone strikes inside Russia, and they have maintained ambiguity over previous high-profile attacks.

But Ukrainian presidential adviser Mikhail Podolyak taunted Moscow in comments on Twitter, and Britain’s Defense Ministry said Russia was likely to consider the attacks on Russian bases more than 500 kilometers (300 miles) from the border with Ukraine as “some of the most strategically significant failures of force protection since its invasion of Ukraine.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Russian authorities will “take the necessary measures” to enhance protection of key facilities. Russian bloggers who generally maintain contacts with officials in their country’s military criticized the lack of defensive measures.

Top House and Senate leaders will present law enforcement officers who defended the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, with Congressional Gold Medals on Tuesday, awarding them Congress’s highest honor nearly two years after they fought with former President Donald Trump’s supporters in a brutal and bloody attack.

To recognize the hundreds of officers who were at the Capitol on Jan. 6, the medals will be placed in four locations — at U.S. Capitol Police headquarters, the Metropolitan Police Department, the Capitol and the Smithsonian Institution. President Joe Biden said when he signed the legislation last year that a medal will be placed at the Smithsonian museum “so all visitors can understand what happened that day.”

The ceremony in the Capitol Rotunda comes as Democrats, just weeks away from losing their House majority, race to finish a nearly 18-month investigation of the insurrection. Democrats and two Republicans conducting the probe have vowed to uncover the details of the attack, which came as Trump tried to overturn his election defeat and encouraged his supporters to “fight like hell” in a rally just before the congressional certification.

Awarding the medals will be among House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s last ceremonial acts as she prepares to step down from leadership. When the bill passed the House more than a year ago, she said the law enforcement officers from across the city defended the Capitol because they were “the type of Americans who heard the call to serve and answered it, putting country above self.”

Police in Minnesota say an officer fatally shot a man who they say displayed a handgun as they were trying to arrest him.

The St. Paul Police Department said Tuesday that officers were responding to a domestic assault Monday evening and were told by the caller that the man had a gun, before the call ended abruptly. The man ran away before officers arrived.

According to a statement from police, officers saw the man running with a gun in his hand. When they saw him appear to attempt a carjacking, officers drove up to the man and police believe they struck him with a squad car.
“As the officers got out of their car, the man was standing with the gun in his hand and an officer fired multiple rounds, striking the man in the torso and leg,” the statement said. “Officers immediately rendered aid to the man and called for St. Paul Fire medics.”

The man was taken to a hospital where he later died.

Owen Larson can be reached at lars6521@stthomas.edu
Natalie Hoepner also contributed to this report.