Municipal workers remove debris in front of a building damaged during overnight Russian drone strikes, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Odesa, Ukraine on May 18, 2026.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Kyiv:

Russia launched more than 2,000 attack drones at civilian and military targets across Ukraine last month, Kyiv’s military said on Friday, as Kremlin forces press a grinding offensive on the front line of their February 2022 invasion.

Moscow has carried out regular air strikes on Ukrainian towns and cities, with the capital Kyiv coming under attack 20 times in October alone, according to city officials.

Ukraine’s General Staff said in a statement it had intercepted 1,185 of the 2,023 drones launched last month and that another 738 were “locationally lost”.

“In total, since the beginning of 2024, the enemy has launched 6,987 attack UAVs on the territory of Ukraine. Enemy drones mostly targeted civilian and critical infrastructure,” it said.

Ukraine said on Friday it had destroyed 31 drones and one missile in Russia’s latest overnight strike, which damaged residential buildings in at least two regions and a fire station in the southern Odesa region.

Russia has denied aiming at civilians and said power facilities are legitimate targets when they are part of Ukrainian military infrastructure.

Ukraine is girding for another season of power cuts amid the threat of new Russian attacks on the country’s energy system, which had already been weakened by a series of strikes earlier this year.

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

Police officers and firefighters work at a site of warehouses damaged during a Russian military strike, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Kherson, Ukraine September 19, 2023. File
| Photo Credit: REUTERS

Six people have been killed in Russian attacks on Ukraine in the past 24 hours, local officials reported Sunday.

Two people were killed and three more injured in the Kherson area after more than 100 shells bombarded the region over the weekend, local governor Oleksandr Prokudin wrote on social media.

Two guided bombs later hit key infrastructure in Kherson city, sparking a partial blackout and disruption to the area’s water supply, reported the head of the city’s military administration, Roman Mrochko.

Local officials said two more people had died in the Donetsk area and that a 57-year-old man and a 54-year-old woman had been killed by an airstrike that destroyed their home in the Kharkiv region.

Meanwhile, the Russian defense ministry announced Sunday that Ukraine had launched 27 drones in an overnight attack on western Russia.

Officials said that 18 drones were shot down over the Kursk region, leading to speculation in the Russian press that the attack could have been targeting the nearby Khalino military airfield.

Images on social media showed burning debris just 1.5 kilometers (a mile) from the airbase, which was previously attacked by Ukrainian forces at the end of September.

Writing on social media, Kursk governor Roman Starovoit said that debris had fallen in the region’s namesake capital and the nearby village of Zorino. No casualties were reported.

Officials also said that two more drones had been shot down over Russia’s Belgorod region, but did not confirm the fate of the remaining seven drones.