Officials said early on Thursday morning that Russian soldiers had attacked the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv with drones for the second night in a row, injuring four people.
Tymur Tkachenko, the chief of Kyiv’s military administration, said that the ongoing drone attack damaged many homes and other buildings in the city, including a kindergarten. City officials also warned citizens as a precaution that there might be another rocket assault on the capital.
This attack at night comes after a larger wave of missile and drone attacks across Ukraine on Wednesday that killed six people, including two children, and caused power outages across the country.
A civilian narrative gave a real picture of how the strikes affected people. Nadiia Zinchuk, a 24-year-old store worker, told what happened when the building was hit in Kyiv: “At 7:20 a.m., there was an explosion, and I started to feel pain on my face right away. I started to scream right away. I thought I felt tears on my palm when I swiped my face, but I was bleeding.
Increasing Attacks on Ukraine’s Energy System
Ukrainian officials have made it quite clear that the rising number of strikes is a planned effort by Russia to deliberately damage the country’s energy grid before winter, which is a key point in the more than 3-1/2-year-old conflict.
Energy Minister Svitlana Hrynchuk said that “Most regions of Ukraine were targeted,” which shows that the operation was planned. She highlighted how serious the situation was by saying, “This is the second such attack in a month, which shows that the enemy is systematically trying to destroy Ukraine’s energy sector before winter.” Hrynchuk also said that Russia was specifically going after repair teams that were trying to fix damaged energy infrastructure.
In response, Russia’s Defense Ministry said that it had attacked Ukraine’s energy infrastructure in reprisal for what it said were Ukrainian attacks on Russian civilian targets.
After the harm was done, Ukraine’s Energy Minister Hrynchuk talked to her American counterpart, Chris Wright, during the day. She talked about what happened following the attack and stressed how much Ukraine needs more equipment right away. Reports say that the U.S. Energy Secretary volunteered to help Ukraine get through the tough winter months.
The extent of the recent strikes
The Ukrainian Air Force said that Russia sent 405 drones and 28 missiles during the attacks on Tuesday night. Ukrainian air defense soldiers were quite good at their jobs, taking down 333 drones and 16 missiles.
Mayor Vitali Klitschko of Kyiv said that there was a fire at a tall residential building in the Dniprovskyi area. Ten people were rescued, and five of them, including a kid, were taken to the hospital. There were other fires in the Pecherskyi, Darnytskyi, and Desnianskyi regions. The latter is important since it is home to the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra monastery, which is a well-known icon of Ukrainian culture and spirituality.
Most of Ukraine lost power because of the attacks. Also, the Russian strikes hurt important oil and gas infrastructure in the Myrhorod district in the central region of Poltava. According to Ivan Fedorov, the regional governor, the nocturnal attacks hurt 13 people in the southern frontier district of Zaporizhzhia, which is always being shelled.
City and regional officials have started to reopen emergency help facilities, or “points of invincibility,” in case energy outages last for a long time. These stations give people who are without power, heat, or water a place to warm up, charge their phones, and get food and hot drinks. Since the start of its full-scale invasion in February 2022, Russia has always said that Ukrainian energy facilities are fair game for military attacks.