Russia has hit Kyiv, Ukraine, with another wave of drone strikes, causing five explosions in the capital city, according to officials.
As NBC News reported,Russia attacked Kyiv early Monday morningwith Iranian-made “kamikaze” drones, which carried explosives and hit a residential building in the central Shevchenkivskyi district, Kyiv MayorVitali Klitschkosaid.
“Terror must lose and will lose,” Zelenskyy said on his official Telegram channel in response to the latest attack, per NBC. “And Ukraine will prevail and will bring to justice every Russian terrorist — from commanders to privates who carried out criminal orders.”
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The drone attack comes as other cities, such as Vinnytsia, Odesa and Zaporizhzhia, have seen similar incidents at the hands of Russia in recent weeks amid its escalatinginvasion of Ukraine. Ukraine has attempted to combat Russia with so-calledkamikaze dronesas well, perCNN.
These drones, known as a “loitering munition” because of their ability to circle a target before identifying it and striking, can be fired from a distance and are difficult to detect, CNN reports. The single-use drones are designed to crash and explode.
U.S. officials saidRussia boughtthe drones from Iran in August, though Iranian officials have denied supplying weapons to Russia.
“So the Russians are using these fairly unsophisticated drones against large targets like cities. As you mention there is no military utility to these attacks, this is about Putin satisfying hardliners in Russia [who] were in ecstasy last week after the missile attacks and probably will be after these ones,” retired Australian Army Maj. Gen. Mick Ryan told CNN, adding that the drones “require precision.”
“It turns out they have not had enough, and now they are hitting residential buildings as well and people are dying. And this is scary,” Frolova, 52, shared. “I feel fear, pain, anger and hate… Hate toward, I don’t know, these people who have allowed this to happen in the 21st century. This medieval war.”
On Monday, Russia’s Defense Ministry shared that it used “high-precision long-range air and sea-based weapons” to strike military and energy targets in Ukraine, but did not comment on the drone attack in Kyiv.
While most drones were shot down, the city’s mayor claims that 28 total drones flew toward Kyiv on Monday morning. The head of Zelenskyy’s office, Andrii Yermak, is requesting additional assistance from the West “as soon as possible.”
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Zelenskyy adviser Mykhailo Podolyak wrote on Twitter after the strikes that “Iran is responsible for the murders of Ukrainians,” and that it has given “weapons of mass murder” to Russia.
“That is what unfinished business and concessions to totalitarianism mean,” Podolyak wrote. “The case when sanctions are not enough.”
source: people.com
