law mirror thesis

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1 The Law-Society Framework

• Published: July 2001
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A formidable threshold task in the project to construct a general jurisprudence is to come up with a characterisation of the law-society relationship. This relationship is too complex and unruly to capture fully in a single formula, and can be approached from too many different perspectives. This chapter describes a working framework for the relationship between law and society, pared down to two basic components. The first component consists of two core themes about the relationship between law and society: the idea that law is a mirror of society and the idea that the function of law is to maintain social order. The second component consists of a breakdown of connections between three elements: custom/consent, morality/reason, and positive law. Every theory about law and society encompasses one or another or both of these components.

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Exiting the Hall of Mirrors: Morality and Law in Human Rights

This chapter explores, from the perspective of international human rights law (IHRL), the philosophical debate that has emerged in recent years between proponents of orthodox and political accounts of human rights. It treats IHRL as among the key phenomena theories of human rights must help us to understand if they are to succeed in their aims. I take as my chief interlocutor in this endeavour Allen Buchanan's provocative book, The Heart of Human Rights.

Related Papers

Oxford University Press

Adam Etinson

Human rights have a rich life in the world around us. Political rhetoric pays tribute to them, or scorns them. Citizens and activists strive for them. The law enshrines them. And they live inside us too. For many of us, human rights form part of how we understand the world and what must (or must not) be done within it. The ubiquity of human rights raises questions for the philosopher. If we want to understand these rights, where do we look? As a set of moral norms, it is tempting to think they can be grasped strictly from the armchair, say, by appeal to moral intuition. But what, if anything, can that kind of inquiry tell us about the human rights of contemporary politics, law, and civil society ― that is, human rights as we ordinarily know them? This volume brings together a distinguished, interdisciplinary group of scholars to address philosophical questions raised by the many facets of human rights: moral, legal, political, and historical. Its original chapters, each accompanied by a critical commentary, explore topics including: the purpose and methods of a philosophical theory of human rights; the "Orthodox-Political" debate; the relevance of history to philosophy; the relationship between human rights morality and law; and the value of political critiques of human rights. --- A rich collection of focussed dialogues ― a provocative gift for teaching ― in which the lively ferment over human rights in recent years is deepened, often by becoming refreshingly interdisciplinary, and exciting new formulations are proposed by a diverse range of leading scholars. (Henry Shue, author of Basic Rights (1996)) The Universal Declaration of Human Rights may be the single most influential document of the twentieth century, but is also one of the most controversial. In Human Rights: Moral or Political? Adam Etinson has brought together more than 30 leading legal, political, historical and philosophical commentators on human rights to discuss one anothers claims. The authors range from those who see human rights as successors to natural rights, so as providing universal moral standards, to those who see human rights as positive legal and political instruments that are changing the international order... this collection is seriously and usefully critical not only on these fundamental issues, but also on knotty questions about specific rights, about principles of legal interpretation and about the limits of juridification. (Onora O'Neill, author of Justice Across Boundaries: Whose Obligations? (2016) and winner of the 2017 Berggruen Prize) This is an impressive collection of essays by outstanding human rights scholars from a variety of disciplines. It is certain to make a lasting impact on contemporary thinking about human rights. Taking off from the current debate on the proper status of human rights as "orthodox" or "political," the essays in this volume not only move this important debate forward but also enable a genuine dialogue across disciplines on fundamental philosophical, political and legal questions surrounding human rights and human rights practice. The collection thus excellently represents the depth and scope of engagement across disciplinary boundaries that understanding human rights in all their complexity requires. It will be mandatory reading for anyone interested in the past, present and future of human rights. (Cristina Lafont, author of Global Governance and Human Rights (2012)) Those of us whose work is focused on 'applied' human rights in law, politics, or ethics may nevertheless experience a need for fundamental reflection on the 'big' philosophical questions regarding human rights. Such craving can now be satisfied with a single book. With no less than 30 chapters and an unseen concentration of stars of the philosophical and other firmaments, it can also be read as a sample book, introducing readers to different ways of philosophical rights reasoning. The majority of the chapters engage in discussions at a very abstract or general level. While this may be off-putting to the practical-minded, it also guarantees relevance across the entire field of human rights scholarship, regardless of disciplines, jurisdictions and thematic specialisations. (Eva Brems, Professor of Human Rights Law, University of Gent)

Jan-Christoph Heilinger

John Tasioulas

Current Legal Problems

papers.ssrn.com

Marcus Arvan

This paper defends several highly revisionary theses about human rights. §1 shows that the phrase “human rights” refers to two distinct types of moral claims. §§2-3 argue that several longstanding problems in human rights theory and practice can be solved if, and only if, the concept of a “human right” is replaced by two more exact concepts: International human rights: moral claims sufficient to warrant coercive domestic and international social protection. Domestic human rights: moral claims sufficient to warrant coercive domestic social protection but only non-coercive international action. §3 then argues that because coercion is central to both types of human right, and coercion is a matter of justice, the traditional view of human rights – that they are normative entitlements prior to and independent of substantive theories of justice – is incorrect. Human rights must instead be seen as emerging from substantive theories of domestic and international justice. Finally, §4 uses this reconceptualization to show that only a few very minimal claims about international human rights are presently warranted. Because international human rights are rights of international justice, but theorists of international justice disagree widely about the demands of international justice, much more research on international justice is needed – and much greater agreement about international justice should be reached – before anything more than a very minimal list of international human rights can be justified.

Vidya Kumar

This keynote was given on May 5th 2015 at the Graduate International Conference, Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB). Abstract: I analyse three fundamental critiques of international human rights in international law: theory, history and politics. (NOTE: Paper is on file with author, and is being developed for publication - forthcoming 2017)

… on human rights and human rights …

Saladin Meckled-Garcia

This article engages with the work of three international legal theorists (Kennedy, Orford and Mutua) on the question of human rights and argues that whilst each provides a critique, each also makes a redemptive return to human rights. The article maps and critiques this tendency in contemporary international legal thought.

ANAIS SOCIOLOGY OF LAW 2017: Perspectivas das relações entre direito e sociedade em um sistema Social Global

Nicole Berto Silveira , Priscila Vargas Mello

In a world of political and economic instabilities, the role of human rights discourse should be seen as neutral, solid and coherent towards the preservation of the individuals' life and dignity. However, this article aims to promote a debate about the modern interpretation of what emerged as the man's natural law, and today is the foundation of a transnational and highly complex structure: the international humanitarian system. Through a critical literature review, this work combined arguments proposed by Habermas and Arendt, with the morphological structures of the state, rights of the man and sovereignty, and the Kantian view of cosmopolitanism. This article's main objective is to highlight discrepancies between the theory and practice of human rights discourse, demonstrating the dilemma of duality that abases this system's effectiveness. Yet, the present work found and sustains that human rights discourse may fail where it aims to universalise and promote civil rights as inherently human rights, which ultimately disregard sovereignty, people's self-determination and, in numerous cases, contributes to the destabilisation of institutions and international relations.

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Battered Moscow 'terrorists' show torture wounds as they appear in court after genitals electrocuted

The suspects in the appalling Moscow concert hall terror attack have appeared in court showing signs of torture - after Russian soldiers boasted of hooking one's genitals up to an 80V battery.

The suspected terrorists slaughtered more than 130 people in one of the worst terror attacks in history which was carried out on Friday. And disturbing photos of a Tajikistan "terrorist" laying on a gym floor with his trousers round his ankles and wires attached to his groin were shared online. Vladimir Putin's security forces were then seen boasting after torturing the man.

Wires could be seen from a TA-57 military field telephone capable of discharges of up to 80 volts. His mouth is visibly foaming and he appears to be clenching his teeth. A man in military uniform stands with his foot on the leg of the suspect, who has been named as Shamsuddin Fariddun. The picture was released to Telegram channels sympathetic to the security services.

READ MORE: Three Moscow terror attack suspects plead GUILTY to killing over 130 people after 'being tortured'

Now, pictures have been released of the suspected terror suspect and his alleged co-conspirators looking beaten, cut, bruised, and gormless as they sit in a dock at a Russian court today.

The images of the man attached to wires is an example of the well-known electrocution torture technique in Russia , and it follows an incident when one of the suspect’s ears was cut off on camera with a knife when he was detained in Bryansk region on Sunday.

A telegram channel linked to Wagner paramilitary force said the picture shows how “an ordinary interrogation takes place using a military field telephone TA-57, in common parlance ‘Tapik’. “By turning the coil…discharges are released through the wires... up to 80 volts, which in turn are connected to the prisoner by the fingers, ears or genitals… For best effect, the captured militant should be poured with water.”

It appears that the barbaric treatment of suspects of heinous crimes is being deliberately leaked. The favoured method of disposing of “traitors” by Wagner - headed by former Putin crony Yevgeny Prigozhin - was with a sledgehammer to the head, videos of which were also released.

Human rights group gulagu.net - which highlights widespread torture in Putin’s jails - said: “For more than 10 years, we have been consistently exposing torture and its systemic nature in Russia.

“It is obvious that sanctions for these tortures, as well as for the torture of Ukrainian prisoners, are given from the very top… The same as with Prigozhin using a sledgehammer… an executor of the will of the murderer and dictator Vladimir Putin ... If there is all the evidence and [it] has been collected, why should the FSB torture the Tajiks? So that they take the blame and voice a version [of the atrocity] convenient for Putin and the FSB?”

Three of the four suspects charged with carrying out the concert hall attack in Moscow have tonight admitted guilt in a Russian court.

Moscow's Basmanny District Court formally charged Dalerdzhon Mirzoyev, 32; Saidakrami Rachabalizoda, 30; Mukhammadsobir Faizov, 19; and Shamsidin Fariduni, 25, with committing a group terrorist attack resulting in the death of others. The offence carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. The court ordered that the men, all of whom are citizens of Tajikistan, be held in pre-trial custody until May 22.

All of the men showed signs of torture.

Mirzoyev, Rachabalizoda and Shamsidin Fariduni all admitted guilt after being charged. The fourth, Faizov, was brought to court directly from a hospital in a wheelchair and sat with his eyes closed throughout the proceedings. He was attended by medics while in court, where he wore a hospital gown and trousers and was seen with multiple cuts.

The other three suspects appeared in court heavily bruised with swollen faces amid reports in Russian media that they were tortured during interrogation by the security services.

One suspect, Saidakrami Rachabalizoda, had a heavily bandaged ear. Russian media reported Saturday that one of the suspects had his ear cut off during interrogation.

Fariddun was allegedly seen staking out Crocus City Hall on March 7 when he was pictured at the venue.

This coincided with a warning from the US and UK embassies in Moscow about the imminent threat of a strike on a crowded venue.

Fariddun was seen on his knees after being detained in Bryansk region on Saturday.

Exiled journalist Dmirty Kolezev - editor of Republic media - said: “The Russian security forces are leaking photos showing that detained terrorist attack suspects are being tortured with electric shocks by tying wires to their genitals.

“I have no doubt that after this there will be admissions that the order to kill people in Crocus was given to them personally by Zelensky.

“Torture is, unfortunately, commonplace.

“What is unusual here is that the security forces used to bashfully hide this.

“But now they are proud of it and, apparently, they themselves release photographs of torture to friendly Telegram channels.”

The same suspect was on Sunday frogmarched with other alleged terrorists to the Russian Investigative Committee for a formal interrogation.

Today was a day of mourning across Russia’s 11 time zones for the 137 killed in the horror.

Putin marked it by lighting a candle at the church in his official residence close to Moscow.

He did not visit the scene of the atrocity or visit the wounded survivors in Moscow hospital.

What Can A Total Solar Eclipse Teach Us About Our Universe?

The total solar eclipse on April 8 will be a once in a lifetime opportunity to witness a truly awesome cosmological marvel. You don’t need a scientific background to appreciate its stunning visual beauty, but astronomers and astrophysicists at The University of Texas at Austin have used these rare phenomena to help answer fundamental questions about our universe.

In 1919 two British scientists conducted an experiment intended to verify Albert Einstein’s controversial theory of general relativity. This physical theory, that had been published four years prior, proposed the universe is four-dimensional and that massive objects like the sun actually warp the very fabric of spacetime. According to general relativity, this warped spacetime is what we feel as gravity.

Of course, Einstein’s theory was purely theoretical. So another physicist, Arthur Stanley Eddington, believed observing a total solar eclipse might support the validity of Einstein’s radical thesis. Since Einstein had predicted that gravity would bend the path of light near massive objects like the sun, curving spacetime itself, Eddington realized that during a total solar eclipse, the moon blocks the sun’s light, allowing stars near the sun to be visible. By photographing the positions of stars near the sun during the 1919 total solar eclipse, Eddington’s experiment proved to be a landmark result, helping establish general relativity as the prevailing theory of gravity over Sir Isaac Newton’s previous model.

Disprove Me Right!

Science is as much about disproving as it is proving hypotheses. Always looking for that fatal flaw in Einstein’s theory, several amateur and professional scientists sought to reproduce Eddington’s results in the coming decades. In fact, the last experiment conducted using photography was performed by a team from the U.S. Naval Observatory, Princeton University and UT Austin.

“I was actually on that team,” said Richard Matzner , professor of physics at UT’s College of Natural Sciences. “In 1973, myself and the rest of the group traveled to an area in Mauritania, Africa. There we witnessed a total solar eclipse that lasted for six minutes and 10 seconds, a very long time for an eclipse.”

Using improved visual photographic technology than what Eddington would’ve had at his disposal in 1919, Matzner and his colleagues found reasonable proof to corroborate Einstein’s theory once more.

Riding The Gravitational Wave

At UT Austin’s Center for Gravitational Physics , researchers are expanding on the pioneering work of Eddington and his team by helping toR explore one of the other exciting predictions of  Einstein’s theory of general relativity that observers were unable to verify for an entire century, namely, the existence of gravitational waves.

Simply put, these ripples in spacetime – caused after massive space events, such as two black holes colliding – are the messengers of gravitational information. In the same way electromagnetic radiation (light) provides us with information from the sun, we also get gravitational wave information from objects.

However, it took a long time for gravitational waves to be welcome at the spacetime party. “Gravitational waves were one of Einstein’s predictions that even he was uncomfortable with for a while,” said Deirdre Shoemaker , Director of the Center for Gravitational Physics.

Shoemaker is nonchalant when discussing gravitational waves. However, just a decade prior, they still hadn’t been directly confirmed as real.

It wasn’t until 2015, a century after Einstein even posed the hypothesis, that scientists would successfully find the requisite evidence. And the UT Austin theoretical physicist was part of the international team that confirmed their existence.

“The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, or LIGO project, (of which I am a member) is a large scientific collaboration involving many researchers across different universities and countries,” Shoemaker said. “In 2015, the LIGO’s detections were the first direct observations of gravitational waves.”

(In fact, Shoemaker isn’t the only UT Austin connection to what some described as “the biggest scientific discovery of our time.” The director of LIGO at the time they found the first-ever detection of gravitational waves, David Reitze , is an alumnus who started his career as a Ph.D. candidate at UT Austin.)

There are two LIGO observatories located in the United States – one in Washington and another in Louisiana. Each uses lasers and mirrors arranged in an “L” shape to precisely measure the distance between the mirrors.

Gravitational waves passing through the observatories cause tiny changes in the distances between the mirrors. By measuring any differences in the distances using the lasers, LIGO can detect these gravitational waves. This allows scientists to study cataclysmic events in the universe like black hole and neutron star collisions.

Black Hole Sun

Since total solar eclipses can only be seen about every 400 years from any one place on the surface of the Earth, Shoemaker studies gravitational waves by observing the more dependable black hole – also large enough to warp spacetime.

Choosing the empty nothingness of a black hole over the sun doesn’t appear to have been a compromise for the NSF Career award winner and fellow of the American Physical Society.

“Black holes are beautiful because they don’t contain any messy matter,” she said. “They’re just curved space time.”

And, since they can form in pairs, and even binary pairs that eventually merge into one bigger black hole, they are excellent sources of gravitational waves.

“Black holes are our strongest source,” said Shoemaker. “We see them with the detector all the time. We’ve observed almost 90 individual gravitational waves coming from black holes since 2015.”

Texas Sunsets Meet Their Match

Of course, one doesn’t need to retain any of the above information to enjoy the total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024. It will be just as spectacular to watch for the non expert as it will be for the most zealous of gravitational physicists.

But as Arthur S Eddington demonstrated over a century ago, the eclipse on April 8 is an opportunity for those now carrying the gravitational torch to find answers to other questions about our universe. You just have to know what to look for.

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Mar 29, 2024

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Universal Brain-Computer Interface Lets People Play Games With Just Their Thoughts

In defense of the mirror thesis

• Published: 22 May 2010
• Volume 155 , pages 199–205, ( 2011 )

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In this journal, Luke Russell defends a sophisticated dispositional account of evil personhood according to which a person is evil just in case she is strongly and highly fixedly disposed to perform evil actions in conditions that favour her autonomy. While I am generally sympathetic with this account, I argue that Russell wrongly dismisses the mirror thesis—roughly, the thesis that evil people are the mirror images of the morally best sort of persons—which I have defended elsewhere. Russell’s rejection of the mirror thesis depends upon an independently implausible account of moral sainthood, one that is implausible for reasons that Russell himself suggests in another context. Indeed, an account of moral sainthood that parallels Russell’s account of evil personhood is plausible for the same reasons that his account of evil personhood is, and that suggests that Russell himself is actually committed to the mirror thesis.

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Barry, P.B. In defense of the mirror thesis. Philos Stud 155 , 199–205 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-010-9573-5

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CT ‘clean slate law’ full implementation faces another delay

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Just three months after announcing plans for full implementation of a 2021 law to erase misdemeanors and certain low-level felonies for more than 80,000 people near the start of this year, Connecticut officials have fallen well short of their promise, with only about 13,600 residents having had their records cleared so far.

A celebratory gathering in December was intended to mark the long-anticipated conclusion to delays with Connecticut’s “clean slate” initiative, the automatic erasure of tens of thousands of low-level criminal records for a majority of Black and Latino residents negatively affected by laws passed during the so-called war on drugs. 

Connecticut’s erasure system was going to identify more than 178,000 offenses from more than 80,000 people, officials said, and the “vast majority” of expungements would happen by the end of January 2024. 

But the Lamont administration recently notified clean slate advocates that only roughly 13,600 people have had their records cleared, which accounts for about 33,000 charges. Around 30,000 of the expunged offenses have been for misdemeanors, while approximately 3,000 are for low-level felonies. 

[Here’s what to know about CT’s ‘clean slate’ law, which erases some criminal records]

Aging data systems and inaccurate data are the reasons for the most recent delay, according to the Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection, one of the agencies responsible for clean slate’s rollout.

The state now expects that another 65,000 people will have their convictions erased in the coming weeks, with a goal of erasing all eligible records dating back to the year 2000 within the next 12 months.

The situation has caused confusion among clean slate advocates, given that much of the information about the delay did not come until they actively sought out answers from officials about the status of implementation — and that the information came just months after the celebratory press conference.

“They knew at the press conference that clean slate would definitely benefit the majority of Black and brown people who experience incarceration because those are harsher punishments that we get as Black and brown people,” said Rodney Moore, who works with the Congregations Organized for a New Connecticut’s criminal legal reform team, or CONECT, a coalition of religious institutions behind the advocacy for clean slate. 

“That was the excuse the first time — that there was a data issue, and we’re having issues with IT. And we’ve got to get these things right. And it was going to be taken care of,” Moore said. “But now we’re back at it again.”

Rick Green, a spokesperson for DESPP, said that state officials “underestimated” the extent of the problems with the data system when the full rollout was announced in December. But under the direction of new Commissioner Ronnell Higgins , Green said, the agency is committed to providing more frequent updates about implementation. 

“I think the advocates are in a position where they have every right to be wanting to get some clear answers here. This is a pretty important thing,” Green said. “We’re talking about convictions that have stayed on somebody’s record for a long time, and we have an obligation to move quickly and fairly on this.”

Signed into law in 2021, clean slate sets out to automatically erase the criminal records of people seven years after the date of their conviction for a misdemeanor or 10 years after the date of their conviction for certain low-level felonies, depending on the offense, if they had not been convicted of other crimes.

The goal of the initiative is to leverage information technology system capabilities to lower barriers to education, employment and housing for people who have completed their sentences.

A month before scheduled implementation in January 2023, however, the Lamont administration announced that erasures for tens of thousands of people who would likely benefit from the clean slate initiative wouldn’t happen until the second half of the year . 

Officials attributed the holdup to outdated technology and outstanding legal and policy questions. In the interim, the administration touted the state’s success with the erasure of cannabis-related misdemeanors for roughly 44,000 people under a cannabis legalization law. 

That was later followed by the Connecticut legislature’s passage of a bill making technical and clarifying changes to the original clean slate measure aimed at addressing the impediment.

After $8 million in upgrades to information technology, the state announced in December that the delay was over. More than 80,000 people would have their records expunged at the beginning of 2024, officials told a packed room at Community Baptist Church in New Haven.

In mid-February, however, members of CONECT said they received an email from the Lamont administration with a notice that the project was behind schedule due to data concerns. And earlier this month, both parties met in person to discuss the delay.

At least one concern expressed by state officials during the meeting, according to Phil Kent, a civil attorney who works with CONECT’s criminal legal reform team, was that the state did not want to have somebody whose record was improperly cleared go out and commit a crime. The law requires an individual to live crime-free for seven to 10 years before they qualify for erasure. Other states with clean slate laws have also shown low recidivism rates for beneficiaries of record expungement.

There is a different concern among the advocates: of the roughly 13,600 people who have benefited from erasure, accounting for about 33,000 charges, the overwhelming majority are people with misdemeanors and not felonies.

It is notable considering that Black people in Connecticut make up a higher share of people with felony convictions than their racial counterparts, according to the Paper Prisons Initiative, a criminal justice research organization, and because Lamont once proposed his own version of clean slate that would have applied only to nonviolent misdemeanors and indicated that he was wary of any measure more ambitious than his own. 

Green, of DESPP, said all stakeholders are committed to full implementation, both for people with eligible misdemeanors and felonies, provided the data is “fair and accurate.” 

He attributed the disparity in the expunged misdemeanors and felonies to the agency discovering what it calls “false positives,” or people in the system who appear eligible for clean slate erasure but who, after closer examination, have another offense on their record, making them ineligible. 

“They’ve had to carefully go through those records to make sure that the people that they are erasing are people who are eligible for erasure,” Green said. “It’s just way more time-consuming than had been originally anticipated.” 

The agency said it plans to provide more frequent updates through both the official clean slate website and the DESPP website moving forward. “We’re going to stay on top of it. I think there will be more transparency,” Green added. 

But some clean slate advocates say three years seems like a long enough time to have sorted out problems with the data. 

As an act of protest, CONECT is holding an event at the State Capitol on Wednesday, where organization leaders plan to wash the feet of 12 people affected by the delay, a symbolic nod to Jesus washing the feet of his disciples and a gesture of forgiveness during Holy Week. 

Their message is clear: they want people affected by the criminal legal system to have a fair shot at attaining an education, employment and housing, just as the state promised them in 2021. 

“Anyone who’s kind of paying attention to this can see over time the inconsistencies between what the administration has said is going to happen and what is actually happening,” Kent said. “That just ends up making it extremely difficult for people in the community to really be in a place where they can feel confident that clean slate is going to work and feel confident that if they are eligible, that they will ultimately get their record cleared.” 

Jaden Edison Justice Reporter

Jaden is CT Mirror's justice reporter. He was previously a summer reporting fellow at The Texas Tribune and interned at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies. He received a bachelor's degree in electronic media from Texas State University and a master's degree in investigative journalism from the Toni Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism at Columbia University.

Panic as drone attacks MOSCOW and skyscraper bursts into flames with Russia blaming Ukraine

Residents and employees wailed as explosions tore apart several floors of a major skyscraper in the centre of Moscow today - in an attack which Russian officials blamed on Ukraine

• 09:49, 30 Jul 2023
• Updated 13:36, 30 Jul 2023

Drones attacked Moscow elite office and residential skyscraper district early today causing damage to at least two buildings.

Screams were heard as explosions ripped apart the several floors of a major building. The suspected Ukrainian attack inflicted the kind of terror on Moscow that Vladimir Putin ’s armed forces have imposed on Kyiv and other Ukrainians cities during the war.

The first of two drones penetrating the Russian capital’s much-vaunted air defences struck at 3:20am. It hit the 50-storey IQ Quarter Tower, part of a business district called Moscow City that also includes elite residential apartments and penthouses.

A second drone struck at the business centre Oko-2 at 4:10am. Footage showed the impact of one of the drones . The Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin said the facades of two buildings were “slightly damaged” but the strikes appeared more serious.

The Russian defence ministry claimed the drones striking the skyscrapers had lost control after being jammed by electronic warfare technology. There was no confirmation that this was accurate. There was a report of two casualties with injuries - a security guard and a 21 -year old woman - but multiple ambulances were at the scene.

The attack reached the heart of Moscow, close to the White House headquarters of the Russian government. One of the buildings struck by the drones houses the Ministry of Economic Development and the Ministry of Industry and Trade.

Dmitry Medvedev - former Russian president who is now Vladimir Putin’s deputy on the powerful Russian security council - warned: "Our Armed Forces, repelling the counteroffensive of the collective enemy, protect the citizens of Russia and our land. This is obvious to all decent people. But beyond that, they prevent world conflict.

"After all, if we imagine that the offensive of the [Ukrainians] with the support of NATO was successful, and they seized part of our land, then we would have to, by virtue of the rules of the decree of the President of Russia dated 06/02/2020, go for the use of nuclear weapons.

"There is simply no other way out. Therefore, our enemies must pray to our warriors. They do not allow the global nuclear fire to flare up."

The office of the Ministry of Digital Development, Telecommunications and Mass Media is also based here, part of Putin’s propaganda edifice. Government documentation from the ministries was strewn in the street after the attack.

The attacks came the same day as Russia's Navy Day parade, which went ahead in St Petersburg and Kronstadt as Putin was joined by leaders of a number of African nations marking a Russia-Africa summit. One video highlights the voices of two women seeing an incoming drone.

“There it is flying,” says one. “It flies so quick.”

Another video has two more women on Presnenskaya Embankment, one saying: “I told you…” One screams: “Ah! Mamochka! [Mummy…] “Right next to us a drone hit a building. “I filmed it.”

Guests at a Novotel hotel at Moscow City were panicked by the attack. Another shows a woman in bed as the drone attack is seen from her high-rise window. Flights were temporarily halted at major Moscow international airport Vnukovo, used by Putin and members of the Russian government, due to the drone strikes.

A source said: ”Vnukovo airport is closed for arrivals and departures. “Flights are being redirected to other airports. One flight is in the waiting area.” Later the airport was reopened. Air defences were working in the Odintsovo district.

There were also reports of an intense drone attack on annexed Crimea. The Russian Defence Ministry said: “On the morning of July 30, an attempt of a terrorist attack by the Kyiv regime with unmanned aerial vehicles on objects in the city of Moscow was suppressed.

“One Ukrainian UAV was destroyed in the air by air defence over the Odintsovo district of the Moscow region. “Two more drones were suppressed by electronic warfare and, having lost control, crashed on the territory of the Moscow City non-residential building complex.”

It was portrayed as an “attempted terrorist attack by the Kyiv regime”. There was no immediate comment from the Ukrainians. Moscow routinely downplays attacks by Ukraine in an attempt not to alarm people.

A source said: "The glazing was shattered as a result of the blast at the level of fifth and sixth floors of the 50-story building on Presnenskaya embankment.” TASS reported: “There are no casualties and no fire has started.

“The people are being evacuated. Operational services and law enforcement agencies arrived on the scene. “Law enforcement agencies reported that the Air Defence Troops repelled an attack by two aircraft-type drones in the west of Moscow Region.

“In addition, eyewitnesses report the sounds of an explosion in the west of Moscow.” In Crimea, the defence ministry claimed that 25 drones had been repelled. The defence ministry said: "Tonight an attempt by the Kiev regime to carry out a terrorist attack by twenty-five aircraft-type unmanned aerial vehicles on facilities on the territory of the Crimean peninsula has been foiled. “Sixteen Ukrainian UAVs were destroyed by air defence fire.

“Another nine Ukrainian drones were suppressed by electronic warfare and crashed in the waters of the Black Sea and Cape Tarkhankut without reaching their target. There were no casualties or damage as a result of the foiled terrorist attack.”

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