“The Russians have again attacked our city with drones,” Mykolaiv Mayor Oleksandr Senkevich previously said, also on Telegram.
Mykolaiv and Zaporizhia targeted
Mykolaiv, located a little more than 50 km from the Dnieper River which constitutes the front line between the Ukrainian and Russian armies in this area, had until now been relatively spared from attacks by Moscow forces since kyiv’s resumption of the large neighboring city of Kherson in November 2022.
In the town of Zaporizhia, frequently targeted by Russian forces, airstrikes left one dead and 21 injured during the night from Sunday to Monday, according to regional governor Ivan Fedorov.
On the Russian side, the Ministry of Defense announced that it had intercepted four Ukrainian drones in the Voronezh region, bordering Ukraine.
The previous night, both sides had carried out drone attacks on an unprecedented scale.
The Russian Defense Ministry claimed to have neutralized 34 drones in the Moscow region on Sunday morning, a record in the area of the Russian capital since the start of the conflict in 2022.
According to this source, 36 other Ukrainian drones were shot down in two regions bordering Moscow and in three others bordering Ukraine.
According to the governor of the Moscow region, Andrei Vorobiov, a 52-year-old woman was injured by shrapnel, burned to the face, neck and hands, and two houses were set on fire.
This operation in the suburbs of Moscow comes four days after a massive Russian drone attack on the Ukrainian capital, targeted almost daily for a month.
Exhausted troops
During the night from Saturday to Sunday, a new “record” attack by 145 Russian drones targeted Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky denounced on X. The Ukrainian Air Force said 62 of these drones had been neutralized.
On the front, Ukrainian troops are becoming exhausted, suffering from their inferiority in weapons and personnel, and retreating in multiple sectors in eastern Ukraine, where Russian troops have been advancing more rapidly in recent weeks.
Furthermore, thousands of North Korean soldiers are, according to kyiv and the West, deployed in the Russian region of Kursk, where the Ukrainian army has controlled a few hundred square kilometers since its surprise operation launched on August 6. kyiv assures that they have already been engaged in combat.
The West, however, refuses to authorize kyiv to strike deep into Russian territory with the weapons it supplies and to shoot down Russian missiles targeting Ukrainian cities, for fear of an escalation.
According to the Washington Post, US President-elect Donald Trump spoke last Thursday with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and asked him not to provoke an escalation in Ukraine.
A spokesperson for the US president-elect’s transition team said in a statement to AFP that it would not “comment on private calls between President Trump and other leaders”.
