Kyiv hit with drone attack
RUSSIA has launched its biggest drone attack on Kyiv since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine began last year, military officials said last night.
At least five people, including an 11year-old girl, were injured after Iranianmade Shahed drones hit the Ukrainian capital at around 4am yesterday.
Several buildings, including a nursery, were also damaged in the six-hour attack, which saw 17,000 people in and around Kyiv left without power.
Officials said more than 75 drones had been fired at the capital, with 74 being shot down.
The Sumy, Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhzhia,
Mykolaiv and Kirovohrad regions were also targeted.
‘[But] Kyiv was the main target,’ Mykola Oleshchuk, commander of the Ukrainian Air Force, said on his Telegram channel.
President Volodymyr Zelensky called the drone assault – the fourth on Kyiv this month – an act of ‘wilful terror’ and said Ukraine would ‘continue to work to unite the world in the fight against Russian terror’.
‘Our soldiers shot down most of the drones. Unfortunately, not all,’ he added. ‘But we continue to work to strengthen our air defence and shoot down more.
‘The closer we are to winter, the more Russians will try to make the strikes more powerful.’ Yesterday’s drone attack bears similarities to assaults a year ago, when Russia began targeting Ukraine’s infrastructure, leaving millions without energy and heating during the bitter winter.
It also came on the day the country marks the 1932-33 Holodomor famine – brought on by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin – which killed millions of Ukrainians.