Moscow swarmed Kyiv with suicide drones Wednesday after weeks of smaller-scale strikes, but the Ukrainian Air Force reported all 13 of the Iranian-made drones were shot down.
The explosive-laden craft fell on the capital city’s central Shevchenkivskyi district, with at least two governmental buildings sustaining damage, but no casualties were reported, Kyiv’s mayor Vitali Klitschko said.
Ukrenergo, the company that manages Ukraine’s embattled power grid, reported no new outages as a result of the bombardment.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky lauded his country’s air defenses, saying all of the 13 Iranian-made suicide drones launched at Kyiv were shot down.
“Well done guys, I’m proud,” Zelensky said.
The triangular-shaped drones are common enough in the skies over Ukraine to have earned the nickname “mopeds” for the buzzing sound of their engines.
“I was already in the kitchen. I heard everything – I heard the buzzing ‘moped’ and I ran into the bathroom,” said Yana, a 39-year-old resident of Kyiv.
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“I want this all to be over … For [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, that bastard, to die. Those are the only emotions,” she said.
The drones arrived over the city near dawn, in what Ukrainian air force spokesperson Yuriy Ihnat said was a deliberate attempt to sneak them past Ukrainian air defenses.
The move stands in contrast with Russia’s brazen rush-hour air raids on Kyiv and other cities in the fall.
Elsewhere in the country, Russian strikes hit targets in 10 different provinces, Zelensky’s office said.
Two university buildings, a hospital and at least one apartment building were struck in Kramatorsk, a city near the front line in Donetsk.
Shelling also struck several towns along the southern front in the Kherson province.
With Post wires
