KYIV (Reuters) – Russia launched a new drone attack on Ukraine overnight from Friday to Saturday, targeting the capital Kyiv in an offensive that lasted until late morning and injured at least one no one, city officials said.
Debris from downed drones hit six neighborhoods in the city, injuring a police officer, damaging residential buildings and starting fires, according to Kyiv military administrator Serhi Popko.
The mayor, Vitalii Klitschko, had indicated earlier that two people had been injured.
“Another night. Another air raid alert. Another drone attack. The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation again attacked Kyiv according to their usual tactics,” Serhi Popko wrote on social media.
All drones targeting Kyiv have been shot down, he added.
Reuters correspondents reported hearing explosions in and around the city during an air alert that lasted more than five hours. A drone was seen flying low above the city amid the din of automatic weapons fire.
The Ukrainian military said on Saturday that air defenses had destroyed 39 of the 71 Russian drones launched and that 21 others had been “lost to sight”.
President Volodimir Zelensky said strikes were also reported in central Poltava and the northeastern Sumy and Kharkiv regions.
“This year we have faced the threat of 'Shahed' drones almost every night, sometimes in the morning, and even during the day,” he wrote on social media, referring to the attack drones of Iranian manufacturing used by Russia.
Russian forces regularly carry out airstrikes against Ukrainian towns behind the front lines of the war, which began when Russia invaded its neighbor in February 2022.
Kyiv's military said Friday that Moscow's forces launched more than 2,000 drones at civilian and military targets in Ukraine in October alone.
Russia has denied targeting civilians and said power plants were legitimate targets when they were part of Ukraine's military infrastructure.
(Reporting by Dan Peleschuk; with Gleb Garanich and Pavel Polityuk, French version Benjamin Mallet)
