Russia launched a large-scale drone assault on Ukraine overnight from Saturday into Sunday, deploying 165 unmanned aerial vehicles, according to Ukraine’s armed forces.
In the capital, Kyiv, the attacks triggered fires that left eleven people injured, including two children, according to the State Emergency Services (SES).
The SES reported that the attack affected three districts of the capital: Obolonskyi, Sviatoshynskyi, and Shevchenkivskyi.
In Obolonskyi, a blaze damaged a 12-storey residential building. Nadiya, one of its residents, described how she reacted when the attack happened:
“When it hit, we didn’t know what to do. I was with my son, and I said to him: ‘Come on, let’s go!’ I grabbed him like this, in my pyjamas, and ran over here. We saw a neighbour come out and started running away.”
Nadiya added “We saw people coming down the stairs to evacuate. We were all sitting here in the dark. There was a strong fire, they were putting it out, and we were sitting here. Two guys got hurt, an ambulance came, but they didn’t take them, probably they were under a lot of stress.”
Meanwhile, in Sviatoshynskyi, residential buildings were affected by fire, and in Shevchenkivskyi, local infrastructure bore the brunt of the attack, with roads and electricity poles damaged.
The SES said that 75 firefighters were deployed to tackle the blazes, all of which have now been extinguished.
Further south, the central region of Cherkasy also sustained damage following Russian shelling.
In the town of Cherkasy, the facades and windows of multi-storey buildings were destroyed, along with warehouses belonging to a furniture company, a trading base, and garden structures.
One victim, Vasyl Shevchenko, recounted the attack, “There was no whistle, no noise, nothing, it just hit us so hard that the windows blew out. Thank God we are alive. They say that you need to take packages, take documents, take this and that. In such a situation, what can you take? We just took our underwear and ran.”
Preliminary reports indicate that ten flats were damaged during the overnight strikes, two of which were completely destroyed by fire.
Emergency services mobilised more than 100 rescuers and 26 vehicles to respond to the affected areas, where both homes and businesses were impacted by the fires.
According to the Air Armed Forces of Ukraine’s Telegram channel, the regions of Kharkiv, Donetsk, and Dnipropetrovsk were also targeted during the overnight strikes.
While Ukraine’s military says it shot down 69 Shahed-type drones and others, 80 went off radar.
Meanwhile, Russia’s Defence Ministry released footage on Sunday, claiming it showed Russian forces striking Ukrainian military positions in the southern Kherson region.
Video editor • Lucy Davalou
