Ukraine: Russian hammering in Kiev with 430 drones – 4 dead, many damage to buildings

Ukraine: Russian hammering in Kiev with 430 drones – 4 dead, many damage to buildings

Kiev experienced a “hell” night with Russia launching a massive missile attack and drones targeting many districts of its capital Ukrainian with 4 people losing their lives. Moscow pointed out that it shot down more than 200 Ukrainian drones on its territory.

“Four people were killed (…) around 430 drones and 18 missiles were used” in Russia’s overnight attacks against Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky noted in a post on X, accusing Russia of a “premeditated attack aimed at causing maximum harm to the population and damage to civilian infrastructure.”

“Ukraine is responding to these strikes with long-range force and the world must stop these attacks on (human) life with sanctions,” he stressed.

“The Russians hit apartment buildings. Many large buildings have been damaged throughout Kyiv, in almost every district,” the head of the city’s military administration, Timur Tkachenko, said earlier.

Eight out of ten districts of the city were hit by the Russian attacks, according to emergency services, and municipal authorities warned that public transport was experiencing problems this morning in the Ukrainian capital.

Police said around 30 residential buildings were damaged in overnight Russian strikes with missiles and drones, but did not say how many were injured.

Earlier, she had announced in her Telegram post “the death of an elderly woman in the Desniansky area and 24 injured, including a pregnant woman and a 10-year-old boy.”

AFP reporters heard loud explosions in the city center overnight and observed air defense systems being activated against drone and missile strikes.

Early in the morning, Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko also asked residents to rush to shelters, warning of a “massive enemy attack on the capital”.

Fires also broke out in several districts after the strikes and emergency services were mobilized, he added.

“Sectors of the heating network were damaged. In the Desniansky area, due to an emergency on the main heating line, some buildings have been temporarily left without heating,” he explained, while adding that “water and electricity interruptions are also expected.”

Ukraine’s energy ministry said in the meantime that overnight Russian attacks on energy infrastructure caused power outages in parts of Kyiv region and Odesa and Donetsk regions.

“Tough Night”

Oleksandr Markushin, the mayor of Irpin, a municipality in the Kyiv region, described in a post on his Facebook account a “difficult night” with “many shahet drones and missiles flying over the community.”

Continuing the offensive that began in 2022, Russia, whose forces are better equipped and larger in number, continues to advance in eastern Ukraine and especially in the Donetsk region where the main part of the fighting has been taking place lately.

At the same time, Moscow has for weeks increased its shelling of Ukrainian energy and civilian infrastructure and the railway network of its neighbor, as the temperature drops as winter approaches.

In Russia, authorities said they shot down a large number of Ukrainian drones, some of which targeted the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk, important for Russian oil exports, as well as the cities of Volgograd and Saratov.

“Overnight, air defense systems intercepted and destroyed 216 Ukrainian drones,” 66 of them in the southern Krasnodar region and 59 over the Black Sea, the Russian Defense Ministry said in a Telegram statement.

An oil refinery in Novorossiysk was hit by a fire that was later extinguished, and residential buildings were damaged by drone fragments, as was a civilian ship, and four people were injured overall, authorities said.

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