Russian troops launch nightly drone strikes on Kiev

Before dawn on Sunday, Russian forces launched a spate of drone strikes against Ukraine’s capital for the first time in nearly two weeks, according to Ukrainian officials.

At around 2:30 am, air raid sirens sounded in the capital Kiev. Explosions were reported later.

Serhiy Popko, the head of the city’s military administration, said air defenses had destroyed all drones in Kiev’s airspace. It was the first time in 12 days that Russian forces used Iranian-made attack drones to attack the capital, he said said in a statement on the Telegram messaging app.

No one was killed, but debris from downed drones damaged three houses in the Kiev region, according to the local military administration in a statement on Telegram. And a man sustained a leg injury in one of those homes, it added.

The overnight attacks came from the army of Ukraine reported “heavy fighting” on the front lines in the east, where Kiev’s forces are launching a counter-offensive to reclaim territory captured by Russia.

The Ukrainian Air Force said Russia launched a total of eight Iranian Shahed-136 attack drones and three cruise missiles at targets across the country overnight, all of which were destroyed. Russia has carried out repeated nighttime drone strikes on Kyiv since the full-scale invasion in February 2022.

It was also a “loud” night in the Ukrainian-occupied parts of the southern Kherson region, according to the local military administration. A Russian attack on the village of Mylove injured a 13-year-old, according to Oleksandr Tolokonnikov, a spokesman for the regional military administration, on national television. The claim has not been independently verified.