In this photo provided by the Ukrainian Emergency Service on Thursday, Nov. 7, 2024, rescuers put out a fire of a building which was resulted from Russian drone attack in Kyiv, Ukraine.
| Photo Credit: AP

Dozens of Russian drones targeted the Ukrainian capital Kyiv in a nighttime attack that lasted eight hours, authorities said Thursday, as Russia kept up its relentless pounding of Ukraine after almost 1,000 days of war.

Russian forces fired lone drones and swarms of drones that entered Ukrainian airspace from various directions and at a variety of altitudes, officials said, in an apparent attempt to stretch air defense systems and unnerve city residents.

Ukrainian air defences “neutralized” three dozen drones, but falling debris caused damage to a hospital and residential and office buildings in the capital, local authorities said, including a blaze on the 33rd floor of an apartment building.

At least two people were reported injured.

Drone attacks on Kyiv have recently been occurring almost daily, with the nighttime explosions and the continuous buzzing sound of drones keeping the city on edge. Russia is deploying about 10 times more Iranian-made Shahed drones than it was this time last year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said earlier this week.

Ukraine’s forces are struggling to match the might of Russia’s military, which is much bigger and better equipped. Western support is crucial for Ukraine to sustain the costly war of attrition. The uncertainty over how long that aid will continue has deepened, however, with the election of Donald Trump as the next president of the United States. He has repeatedly taken issue with U.S. aid to Ukraine.

Russia, meanwhile, is trying to grind down Ukraine’s appetite for the fight and sap the West’s support for Kyiv by drawing out the conflict.

The Russian barrages mostly involve Shahed drones. They are suited to terrorizing civilians, according to Andrii Kovalenko, head of the state Center for Countering Disinformation.

Russia is aiming to save and stockpile its missiles, which are much more powerful than drones, Kovalenko claimed Thursday. Russia has used missiles effectively in its campaign to knock out Ukraine’s power grid.

Also, the drone attacks gradually wear down Ukraine’s air defenses, making it more vulnerable to future missile launches.

Power outages were reported in the Zhytomyr region, which borders Kyiv to the west, following a Russian attack there, according to the energy company Zhytomyroblenergo.

Another Russian drone attack injured one person in the southern city of Odesa, regional Gov. Oleh Kiper said, as drone debris damaged an 11-story residential building.

Rescuers work at a site where residential buildings were damaged during a Russian military strike, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in a location given as Brovary, Kyiv region, Ukraine in this screengrab from handout video released on August 11, 2024. Photo: State Emergency Service of Ukraine via Reuters

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy acknowledged for the first time on Saturday (August 10, 2024) that Ukrainian forces were fighting in the surprise offensive in Russia’s Kursk, as attacks on the border region continued with authorities rushing to evacuate people.

Moscow’s forces were in their sixth day of intense battles against Kyiv’s largest incursion into Russian territory since the start of the war, which left southwestern parts of Russia vulnerable before reinforcement started arriving.

In a sign of the gravity of the situation, Russia imposed a sweeping security regime in three border regions on Saturday (August 10, 2024), while Belarus, a staunch ally of Moscow, sent more troops to its border with Ukraine, accusing Kyiv of violating its air space.

In his nightly video address, Mr. Zelenskyy said he had discussed the operation with top Ukrainian commander Oleksandr Syrskyi, vowing to restore justice after Russia launched the full-scale invasion on its smaller neighbour in February 2022.

“Today, I received several reports from Commander-in-Chief Syrskyi regarding the front lines and our actions to push the war onto the aggressor’s territory,” Mr. Zelenskyy said. “Ukraine is proving that it can indeed restore justice and ensure the necessary pressure on the aggressor.”

Russia’s Defence Ministry said on Sunday (August 11, 2024) it had destroyed 14 Ukrainian drones and four Tochka-U tactical ballistic missiles overnight over the Kursk region, and 18 drones over other Russian regions that Ukraine frequently attacks.

Russian President Vladimir Putin cast the Ukrainian attack — which military analysts say caught the Kremlin off-guard — as a major provocation.

Russia’s top general, Valery Gerasimov, said on Wednesday the attacks had been halted, but Russia has not pushed the Ukrainian forces back over the border.

Russian military bloggers said the situation had stabilised after Russia’s reinforcements, though they said Ukraine was swiftly building up forces.

Injuries and evacuations

Early on Sunday, Kursk officials said 13 people were injured in the city after debris from a destroyed Ukrainian missile fell onto a nine-storey residential building.

It was not clear whether there was further damage. Moscow and Kyiv rarely disclose the full extent of damage inflicted by attacks on them unless there are injuries or damage to residential buildings.

Alexei Smirnov, Kursk’s acting Governor, ordered local authorities to speed up the evacuation of civilians in areas at risk. On Saturday, Russia’s TASS state news agency reported that more than 76,000 people had been evacuated.

Kyiv and Moscow deny targeting civilians in their attacks in the war, which has killed thousands of people and displaced millions of Ukrainians, and has no end in sight.

Russian military bloggers say fighting is taking place as deep as 20 km (12 miles) inside the Kursk region, prompting some of them to question why Ukraine was able to pierce the Kursk region so easily.

After a father and his 4-year-old son were killed in a Russian air attack on Kyiv region on Sunday (August 11, 2024), Mr. Zelenskyy’s chief of staff Andriy Yermak vowed more attacks on Russia’s military infrastructure, saying Moscow does not accept “other arguments”.

Russian Human Rights Commissioner Tatyana Moskalkova said she had sent an appeal to the United Nations demanding it condemn Ukraine’s actions in Kursk.

In a Telegram post, Ms. Moskalkova said she was asking the U.N. Human Rights commissioner to “take measures to prevent gross mass violations of human rights”.