Key Points
- Ukraine's capital Kyiv has suffered what officials say is Russia's largest drone attack of the war.
- The Ukrainian president said more than 70 Shahed kamikaze drones had been launched at Ukraine.
- The attack reportedly left five people wounded and almost 200 buildings without power.
Ukraine's capital has suffered what officials say is Russia's largest drone attack of the war, leaving five people wounded as residents woke to the rumble of air defences and explosions at sunrise.
The attack began hitting different districts of Kyiv in the early hours of Saturday, with more waves coming as the sun came up.
The air raid warning lasted a total of six hours.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said more than 70 Iranian-designed Shahed kamikaze drones had been launched at Ukraine, and that most - but not all - had been downed.
The wreckage of what Kyiv has described as an Iranian Shahed drone downed near Kupiansk, Ukraine. Source: AAP / Ukrainian military’s Strategic Communications Directorate
Mayor Vitali Klitschko, writing on the Telegram app, said the attack had injured five people, including an 11-year-old girl, and damaged buildings in districts all across the city.
Fragments from a downed drone had started a fire in a children's nursery, he said.
Zelenskyy draws connection to Holodomor famine
Zelenskyy pointed out that the attack had come in the early hours of the day when Ukrainians commemorate their worst national tragedy - the 1932-33 Holodomor famine in which several million people starved to death.
"Wilful terror ... The Russian leadership is proud of the fact that it can kill," he wrote on Telegram.
Ukraine's leadership has previously drawn parallels between Holodomor and Russia's current invasion.
Ukraine and more than 30 other countries recognise Holodomor as a genocide of the Ukrainian people by the Soviet Union, which ruled Ukraine at the time and sought to crush its desire for independence.
Moscow denies the deaths were caused by a deliberate genocidal policy and says that Russians and other ethnic groups also suffered because of famine.
Target of drone attacks unclear, reports of Ukrainian offensive on Crimea
The target of Saturday's attack was not immediately clear, but Ukraine has warned in recent weeks that Russia will once again wage an aerial campaign to destroy Ukraine's energy system, as it sought to do last winter.
Ukraine's energy ministry said almost 200 buildings in the capital, including 77 residential ones, had been left without power as a result of the attack.
"It looks like tonight we heard the overture - the prelude to the winter season," Serhiy Fursa, a prominent Ukrainian economist, wrote on Facebook.
The attack came after Russian officials said on Friday Ukraine had launched one of its largest drone attacks on the Crimean peninsula since the Russian invasion.
They did not mention any casualties or damage.
The governor for the Russian-occupied part of southern Ukraine's Kherson region, Vladimir Saldo, said Ukraine launched a major drone attack on Crimea early on Friday.
He said dozens of drones were shot down over the province and the northern part of Crimea.
Russian authorities said air defences downed 13 Ukrainian drones over Crimea and three more over southern Russia's Volgograd region.
Ukrainian officials did not comment on the Russian reports.
