Kyiv:

Russia launched a new overnight drone attack on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities on Saturday, prompting President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to issue a fresh appeal for more air defence and long-range capabilities.

Ukrainian air defences shot down 72 out of 76 Shahed drones over 12 regions in the centre, south and east of the country, the air force said.

“We need more capabilities to strengthen the air shield, air defence, and long-range capabilities to continue protecting life and our people,” Zelenskiy, who is due to travel to the United States later this month, said on the Telegram messaging app.

There were no immediate reports of casualties but authorities described damage to buildings in several parts of the country.

Kyiv city authorities said that drone fragments fell on a municipal building in the city’s Obolon district north of the centre early on Saturday, but no fire broke out at the site.

The governor of the region surrounding Kyiv said drone debris damaged several private houses and a commercial property, and also smashed windows at a high-rise residential building.

In the southern Odesa region, debris damaged several commercial buildings and private houses and also caused several fires.

Air alerts sounded for three to five hours during the night in many regions across Ukraine. Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said air defence units had been in action in the capital during the night. Ukraine also deploys mobile groups of drone hunters and uses electronic warfare to repel frequent Russian drone strikes.

During nearly 31 months of the war, Moscow’s forces bombarded Ukraine with thousands of drones and missiles, killing thousands of civilians, damaging the country’s infrastructure and power sector and wrecking tens of thousands of residential and commercial buildings.

Moscow denies intentionally targeting civilians and says its long-range attacks aim to reduce Ukraine’s ability to fight.
 

Kyiv, Ukraine:

Ukraine’s air force said today that Russia launched a total of 67 long-range Shahed drones in a mass overnight attack, 58 of which it was able to shoot down.

The air force said in a statement on the Telegram messaging app that air defence units were scrambled into action in 11 regions across Ukraine.

Drone debris was found next to the parliament building in the capital Kyiv, the legislature said in a separate statement it posted on its official Telegram page along with several photographs.

It is rare for a Russian missile or drone to get so far into central Kyiv, as the city is protected by a network of Soviet-era and Western-donated air defence systems.

The hilltop government quarter in the city centre is perhaps the best-defended site in Ukraine, as it also houses the offices of the president, cabinet and the central bank.

The pictures on Telegram showed at least four pieces of debris scattered on the ground near the parliament building. One piece lay at the foot of the steps to the building’s main entrance, while another hunk of metal looked riddled with shrapnel.

Reuters correspondents in Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, heard a series of explosions shortly after 3 a.m. (0000 GMT) on Saturday, some of which resounded loudly around the city centre, waking up its residents.

Since the start of its invasion in February 2022, Moscow has launched thousands of missiles and Shahed drones into Ukraine.

The Iranian-designed drone has been used by Russia since September 2022 as a cheap, more expendable alternative to missiles, which are expensive and harder to manufacture.

The propeller-powered Shahed flies at less than 200 km per hour (125 miles per hour) but can be tricky for conventional air defence systems to track because it flies low and emits far less heat than a missile.

Kyiv’s air force said the drones were launched from two border regions in Russia as well as from the Russian-occupied peninsula of Crimea.
 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)