At least four people have been killed by Russian drones, in an apartment building in downtown Kyiv during Monday morning rush hour, and targeted infrastructure across the country in the second wave of air strikes in a week.
Ukrainian soldiers fired into the air trying to shoot down the drones after blasts rocked central Kyiv.
An anti-aircraft rocket could be seen streaking into the morning sky, followed by an explosion and orange flames, as residents raced for shelter.
Local authorities raised the number of dead in the afternoon to at least seven, victims of strikes in the capital and the northeastern region of Sumy.
Many areas were left without power after several Russian strikes targeted key infrastructure.
“All night and all morning, the enemy terrorises the civilian population. Kamikaze drones and missiles are attacking all of Ukraine,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on the Telegram messaging app.
The United States and United Nations have condemned the attacks, while the EU said they would only reinforce its support for Ukraine.
The US embassy in Kyiv condemned Russian attacks on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities on Monday and said the United States stood with the Ukrainian people.
“More desperate and reprehensible Russian attacks this morning against civilians and civilian infrastructure. We admire the strength and resilience of the Ukrainian people. We will stand with you for as long as it takes,” the embassy wrote on Twitter.
The Ukrainian prosecutor’s office said that a fourth person had died in the capital Kyiv, following the strikes.
Earlier, the city mayor Vitali Klitschko said that three people, including a pregnant woman, were killed when a “kamikaze” drone hit a brick residential building on the edge of the central Shevchenkivskyi district. Several others were taken to hospital, he added.
An AFP reporter saw one of the drones crash into a building in the Ukrainian capital as two kneeling policemen tried to shoot it down with their service weapons.
Shortly after air raid sirens sounded, several explosions were heard before 7 a.m. local time (0600 CET) and again after 8:00 am (7:00 CEST).
Witnesses posted videos of drones buzzing across bright morning skies over Kyiv and of what sounded like gunshots of people trying to shoot them down.
In the Sumy region, regional governor Dmytro Zhivitsky said at least three people had been killed and nine injured after “three Russian rockets hit civilian infrastructure”.
A week ago, Russian bombings on a scale not seen for months hit Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities, killing at least 19 people and injuring 105 others and causing an international outcry.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Chmygal said the Russian strikes targeted crucial infrastructure in three regions — around Kyiv, Dnipropetrovsk in central Ukraine, and Sumy in the northeast — leaving “hundreds of districts” without electricity.
A large fire broke out at an energy facility in the Dnipropetrovsk region after a missile struck it overnight, a local official said earlier. Ukraine also reported strikes that set ablaze a sunflower oil terminal in the southern port of Mykolaiv.
Renewed Russian shelling near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant caused it to be disconnected again from Ukraine’s power grid, Ukrainian state energy firm Energoatom said.
Europe’s largest nuclear plant, which has often been shelled during the war, is occupied by Russian forces but operated by Ukrainian staff.
(Reuters/AFP)
