Kyiv: At least six people were killed after Ukraine launched one of its largest aerial attacks against Russia. Hundreds of armed drones were sent across Russia on Sunday, resulting in death and destruction.
This year, Kyiv stepped up its attacks on Russia, with long-range missiles and swarms of drones increasingly targeting military industries and energy facilities. It has also increasingly pummeled giant Wildberries depots, burning billions of dollars’ worth of merchandise belonging to the Russian online retail giant and bringing the war home to the Russian public nearly 4½ years into Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
It had destroyed 822 Ukrainian drones overnight, Russia’s ministry of defence said. Some 600 drones were detected headed toward the Russian capital, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said, with a third of those destroyed over the Moscow region itself.
An 83-year-old man was killed after a Ukrainian drone hit a private home in the Moscow region, local governor Andrey Vorobyov said. He also confirmed that a Ukrainian attack had sparked a blaze at a Wildberries warehouse in the town of Podolsk, Republic TV reported.
A drone attack also targeted three towns in Russia’s southwestern Rostov region, killing five people, local governor Yury Slyusar said. The attack, with more than 150 drones, damaged several homes and a railway station and sparked a forest fire.
Russia also fired missiles at Ukraine’s Kryvyi Rih, killing two and injuring 14 others. This was confirmed by Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Sunday through a social media post. One more person had been killed in the city of Sumy, he said.
A man and a woman both died when their home was hit by a Russian strike in Ukraine’s southern Zaporizhzhia region, Ivan Fedorov, head of the local military administration, said.
More attacks sparked fires throughout the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, injuring six people.
“Wherever the Russians can reach with their ballistic missiles, they strike civilian infrastructure,” Zelenskyy said. “Since this morning, air raid alerts have continued in many regions – the Russians launched another wave of drones.
It had targeted a metallurgical plant in Kryvyi Rih and several military-industrial sites in Kyiv, including a manufacturing facility for Ukraine’s Flamingo missiles, Russia maintained.
The domestically produced missiles are increasingly key to Ukraine’s long-range attacks on Russia, with Zelenskyy announcing Saturday that Kyiv had used the weapons to attack a rocket research and production center in Samara approximately 900 kilometers (560 miles) from the Ukrainian border.
Meanwhile, Romania’s Ministry of National Defense said that a Spanish Air and Space Force F-18 fighter jet shot down a drone that had entered Romanian airspace on Sunday
The drone’s entry into the NATO member’s airspace at 4.44 am, was detected by surveillance systems, the ministry said, about 24 kilometers (14.9 miles) north of the eastern city of Galati near the border with neighboring Moldova. Moldova is a landlocked country between Ukraine and Romania.
A Spanish F-18 aircraft that was performing air policing duties “made radar contact with the target and received engagement approval,” the ministry said. “The drone was safely shot down by the F-18 aircraft at 05:01.”
