Russia barraged Ukraine Saturday with its largest drone strike of its kind since the beginning of the war, with Kyiv enduring the bulk of the attack.
Ukrainian officials said the capital was the main target for Russia’s assault, which began at 4 a.m. local time and continued in waves for six hours.
Ukraine’s air force said it shot down or disabled 74 out of the 75 Iranian-made Shahed drones sent by Russia.
Saturday’s attack was “the most massive air attack by drones on Kyiv,” said Serhiy Popko, head of the city’s military administration. Air force spokesman Yurii Ihnat shared that 66 of the drones had been taken out over Kyiv and the surrounding region by air defenses.
Five people in Kyiv were injured during Russia’s hourslong attack, including an 11-year-old girl, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said on Telegram.
Buildings in districts across the city were also damaged by the attacks, with a kindergarten catching fire from debris that fell from a downed drone, Klitschko said.
Nearly 200 buildings and 170,000 people in Kyiv lost electricity as a result of Saturday’s attack, according to officials, who reported damage to four power lines. Power was restored by the early afternoon.
In recent weeks, Ukraine has warned that Russia will launch an aerial campaign to take out the country’s energy system, as it did last winter. A drone strike last week damaged the electrical grids in the Odessa and Zaporizhzhia regions, resulting in power outages in over 416 towns and villages
“It looks like tonight we heard the overture. The prelude to the winter season,” Serhiy Fursa, a Ukrainian economist, said.
Ukrainian President Vlodomyr Zelensky noted the drone strikes occurred on Holodomor Memorial Day, which commemorates the Russia-created famine that killed millions of Ukranians between 1932 to 1933.
“Wilful terror,” Zelensky said on Telegram. “The Russian leadership is proud of the fact that it can kill.”
In addition to Kyiv in north-central Ukraine, the northeastern region of Sumy and southern regions of Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhzhia, Mykolaiv and Kirovohrad regions were targeted in the drone attack.
Russia’s massive drone strike came amid a temporary reduction in the capacity of Moscow’s Black Sea Fleet to fire cruise missiles due to “logistical problems” at its Novorossiysk base, Ukraine’s military said earlier this month.
With Ukraine using long-range attacks to target Russia’s base in Sevastopol in Crimea, where it typically reloads its fleet’s cruise missiles, Novorossiysk has emerged as Moscow’s best alternative site, the British Ministry of Defense reported.
British military officials said that relocating and reloading the missiles will require new delivery, storage, handling and loading processes.
General Oleksandr Tarnavskyi, who commands Ukrainian forces in southern Ukraine, wrote on Telegram that Russia had reduced its overall number of airstrikes, conducting just four on the southeastern front line in the past day, but that the ground war has continued to grind on in the eastern and southern regions.
Tarnavskyi claimed on Saturday Russian forces lost 502 troops in the past 24 hours, while 24 pieces of military equipment were destroyed, including a tank and four armored personnel.
With Post wires.
