KYIV: Russia has launched a fresh wave of missile strikes across Ukraine as explosions were heard overnight in Kyiv, while at least one person was killed and five others were wounded in the “biggest” Iranian-made Shahed kamikaze drone attack.
Ukraine’s Red Cross said that one person was killed in the southern Odesa region after a missile targeted a warehouse.
It was the fourth attack on Kyiv in eight days, and only one day before Russia marks Victory Day. This annual affair that commemorates the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany during World War II.
Following a recent lull in Russian strikes on civilian targets, Moscow has stepped up its air raids in the last week in anticipation of an anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive.
The latest Russian strikes, which started just after midnight and lasted more than four hours, reportedly involved a kamikaze drone swarm across Ukraine.
The mayor of Kyiv, Vitaliy Klitschko, claimed that Russia had launched up to 60 drones, calling it the “biggest” drone strike to date.
He said the remaining 36 drones had been destroyed above Kyiv, but five people had been injured by drone debris that had fallen to the ground.
The BBC said that it could not verify these numbers independently.
According to Kyiv’s military administration, emergency services were called after drone debris fell onto a runway at Zhuliany international airport, one of the city’s two commercial airports.
The authorities also stated that residents of a residential block in the Shevchenkivskyi neighbourhood of downtown Kiev were hurt by drone debris.
Ukrainian officials said that a warehouse in the Black Sea port city of Odesa caught fire after Russian warplanes launched eight missiles at targets.
The Red Cross of Ukraine announced in a statement that all relief deliveries had to be stopped due to the destruction of its warehouse holding humanitarian goods.
Later, Natalia Humeniuk, a Ukraine’s Southern Command spokesman, said that a security guard’s body had been recovered from the rubble.
The Kherson, Kharkiv, and Mykolaiv districts have also been the target of a wave of missile attacks, the Ukrainian military’s leadership reported in a daily update.
Local authorities in two villages in the southern Kherson area said that at least eight persons, including a toddler, had been hurt.
Vladimir Rogov, the leader of the Russian-backed government in Zaporizhzhia, said that Russian troops struck a warehouse and a Ukrainian army position in the tiny city of Orikhiv.
