Ukraine attacked by barrage of Russian drones
Officials say most are intercepted in overnight assaults
KYIV — Russia targeted Kyiv and Lviv with a series of overnight bombing raids, but Ukrainian air defenses downed many of the weapons, including 32 of 35 Shahed exploding drones, officials said.
Russian forces mostly targeted the region around the Ukrainian capital in a nighttime drone attack lasting around three hours, officials said. The attack was part of a wider bombardment of Ukrainian regions that extended as far as the Lviv region in the west of the country, near Poland.
The Shahed drones made it all the way to Lviv because of the inability of air defense assets to cover such a broad area, Ukrainian air force spokesman Yuriy Ihnat said.
Air defense systems are mostly dedicated to protecting major cities, key infrastructure facilities, including nuclear power plants, and the front line, he said.
“There is a general lack of air defense assets to cover a country like Ukraine,” according to Lviv Governor Maksym Kozytskyi.
Russia also struck the southern Zaporizhzhia region of Ukraine with ballistic missiles.
Ukraine’s air defenses have been reinforced with sophisticated weapons from its Western allies, increasing the success rate at knocking down incoming drones and missiles.
Previously, a winter bombardment by Russia damaged Ukraine’s power supply, though speedy repairs blunted that Kremlin effort.
The latest aerial assaults behind Ukraine’s front line coincided with the early stages of a Ukrainian counteroffensive, as it aims to dislodge the Kremlin’s forces from territory they’ve occupied since a full-scale invasion in February 2022.
The counteroffensive has come up against heavily mined terrain and reinforced defensive fortifications, according to Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the commander in chief of Ukraine’s armed forces.
Russia has also mustered a large number of reserves, Zaluzhnyi said in a post accompanying a video of him visiting frontline positions with other senior officers. Heavy battles are taking place in eastern Ukraine, around Bakhmut, Lyman, Avdiivka, and Marinka, the Ukrainian armed forces said. Russia shelled 15 cities and villages in the eastern Donetsk region, wounding five civilians, including three in Chasiv Yar near Bakhmut, according to Ukraine’s presidential office.
In other developments: Russian forces opened fire on rescue workers in the floodstricken Ukrainian city of Kherson on Tuesday, killing one and injuring eight others responding to the catastrophic effects of a major dam’s destruction.
The monthslong bombardment of Kherson, which Russian soldiers once occupied in southern Ukraine, has not let up since an explosion two weeks ago destroyed the Kakhovka dam upstream on the Dnieper River and unleashed torrents of flood waters. Emergency workers have struggled under artillery fire to evacuate thousands of people from submerged homes while also responding to the devastation.
Britain’s government is proposing legislation that would enable it to divert frozen Russian assets to the rebuilding of Ukraine and keep sanctions in place until Moscow pays compensation to its war-torn neighbor. The announcement is in line with a decision last month at the annual Group of 7 meeting in Hiroshima, Japan, to freeze the estimated $300 billion worth of Russian assets held by banks and financial institutions in those countries — including Britain — “until Russia pays for the damage it has caused to Ukraine.”
The issue of seized assets is highly contentious. While governments have the power to freeze assets, the European Central Bank has privately warned Brussels that confiscating Russian funds or giving the earned interest on those accounts to Ukraine could undermine confidence in the euro and shake financial stability, according to a report in The Financial Times. Ukraine’s reconstruction costs are estimated to top $411 billion, according to the most recent numbers from the World Bank, the European Commission, and the United Nations.