Russia launches 45 drones in mass barrage of Ukraine as Kyiv continues war cabinet reshuffle
Russian forces launched 45 drones over Ukraine Sunday in a five-and-a-half-hour barrage, officials said, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy continued the reshuffle of his war cabinet as the war enters its third year.
In a statement, the Ukrainian air force said it had shot down 40 of the Iranian-made Shahed drones over nine different regions, including on the outskirts of the country’s capital, Kyiv.
The five-and-a-half-hour attack targeted agricultural facilities and coastal infrastructure, officials for Ukraine’s southern defense forces wrote on Telegram. They said that a strike in the Mykolaiv region had injured one person, sparking a fire and damaging nearby residential buildings.
Another person was injured in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region when a blaze broke out due to falling debris from a destroyed drone, said the head of the region’s military administration, Serhiy Lysak.
The strikes come as Zelenskyy continues his shakeup of military commanders in a bid to maintain momentum against
Russian forces.
Kyiv announced Sunday that former deputy defence minister Lt. Gen. Alexander Pavlyuk would become the new commander of Ukraine’s ground forces. The post was previously held by Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, who was named Thursday as the replacement for Ukraine’s outgoing military chief, Gen. Valerii Zaluzhnyi.
New presidential decrees also named Yurii Sodol, the former head of Ukraine’s marine corps, as the new commander of Ukraine’s combined forces; Brig. Gen. Ihor Skibiuk as commander of Ukraine’s air assault forces; and Maj. Gen. Ihor Plahuta as commander of Ukraine’s territorial defence forces.
Incoming commander-in-chief Syrskyi has signalled that his immediate goals include improving troop rotation at the front lines and harnessing the power of new technology at a time when Kyiv’s forces are largely on the defensive.
In a statement on Telegram Saturday, Zelenskyy said that he hoped to “reboot” the upper levels of Ukraine’s armed forces with experienced combat commanders.
“Now, people who are wellknown in the army and who attacking themselves know well what the army needs are taking on new responsibilities,” he said.
A Russian drone strike on Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, killed seven people on the night between Friday and Saturday, including three children, Kharkiv region governor Oleh Syniehubov reported Saturday. Three others sustained injuries, according to the officials.
He said at least 10 drones were launched at Kharkiv, eight of which were shot down. Civilian infrastructure in the Nemyshlyan district of the city was hit, causing a massive fire that burned down 15 private houses, he said.
Syniehubov said that an oil depot was hit, causing the fuel to leak out, which prompted the fire. In a Facebook post, Serhii Bolvinov, head of the investigative department of the National Police, cited a local resident as seeing “a true hell: first the fuel flowed, then everything caught fire.”
Bolvinov said a family of five — including children aged 7, 4 and nine months — burned alive, trapped in their house as the fire raged. Two other adults were killed by the blaze in another house that burned down, he said.
Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said more than 50 people had been evacuated and that emergency workers had contained the blaze by Saturday morning.
In an online statement, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy offered his condolences to the relatives of all the victims and said that “terror can’t remain unpunished. Terror can’t remain without a fair response. Terrorists must lose this war they had started. Russia must be held accountable for every life it ruined and destroyed.”
The Ukrainian air force said air defence systems destroyed 23 out of 31 Iranian Shahed drones launched by Russia overnight. The drones primarily targeted the northeastern Kharkiv region and the southern province of Odesa, the statement said.
Odesa regional governor Oleh Kiper said four people were injured there by the overnight drone attacks.
The attacks came in three waves, he said. The first targeted the regional capital — the port city of Odesa. All nine drones were shot down, but the debris damaged port infrastructure and injured one person.
The second and the third waves targeted port infrastructure in the Danube river area, Kiper said. A total of 12 drones were shot down and three people were injured.
Romania’s Ministry of National Defence said on Saturday that Russia carried out overnight drone attacks on Ukraine’s river ports of Ismail and Reni, near the border with Romania.
The ministry said that an F-16 jet of the Turkish Air Force was deployed from a Romanian airbase around 1:15 a.m. to carry out “reconnaissance missions” in national airspace to monitor the situation. Text alerts were also issued to residents in two counties adjacent to the attacks.
NATO member Romania has discovered drone debris on its territory several times before, following sustained attacks on Ukraine’s port infrastructure as Moscow attempted to disrupt Kyiv’s ability to export grain and other produce to world markets.
The Russian Defense Ministry, in the meantime, accused Ukraine of targeting Russia’s civilian transport vessels in the Black Sea with sea drones on Friday evening. One such drone was destroyed, the ministry said, and others were jammed, with no damage to the ships.
The ministry didn’t say how many sea drones were used or how many ships were targeted. There was no immediate comment from Kyiv’s officials on the alleged attack.