A kindergarten was among the buildings damaged in the latest Russian drone attack on Kyiv. Photo: Efrem Lukatsky/AP
Russia launched its largest drone attack on Ukraine today, striking Kiev with dozens of planes in an attempt to overwhelm the city's air defenses.
Ukrainian officials said they were able to shoot down 74 of 75 drones aircraft (UAVs) in six years. The hour-long blitz is mainly aimed at the capital.
“The enemy launched a record number of attack drones into Ukraine. The main direction of attack is Kyiv,” said the commander of the Ukrainian Air Force, General Nikolai Oleshchuk.
The attack appears to have been launched to disrupt Ukraine's Holodomor Remembrance Day, which honors the memory of millions of starving people. to death in the 1930s under Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.
Ukrainian officials said the attack wounded five people, including an 11-year-old child.
Rescuers extinguish a fire at the site of a drone attack in Kiev Photo: AFP
Drones caused fires and damaged buildings throughout Kiev. “My wife thought the house would fall in half,” said one of the survivors.
During his visit to Kyiv, Latvian President Edgars Rinkevics posted a photo of himself inside a dark bomb shelter on social networks.
Moscow was likely seeking to breach Ukraine's air defenses as they targeted the power grid early in winter.
His forces tried the same tactics last year, leaving millions dead live in frosty and dark conditions, but ultimately failed to suppress the morale of Ukrainians.
Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky said of the drone attack: “More than 70 Shahed on the night of Holodomor remembrance… The Russian leadership is proud that it can kill.”
Spectators inspect the damage to the kindergarten building in Kiev Photo: Maxim Marusenko/NurPhoto/Shutterstock/SHUTTERSTOCK
Shahed drones are low-cost Iranian-made UAVs supplied in huge quantities as part of a growing security alliance between Tehran and Moscow that has deeply worried the West.
A drone attack led to a blackout in '77. residential buildings and 120 institutions, said the head of the Kiev State Administration Sergei Popko.
In his speech on Saturday, Zelensky also made a direct comparison between the Holodomor (which in Ukrainian means death by hunger) and the current Russian attack.
< p>“In the last century, famine came from Moscow. Now we hear words of denial from there. And each of these words of denial actually sounds like a confession,” Zelensky said.
He added that it is “impossible” for Ukraine to forgive Russia for the Holodomor, an artificial famine unleashed by Stalin. he once felt threatened by Ukraine's strengthening economy.
Swiss neutrality
Swiss President Alain Berset was also in Kiev and paid tribute to the victims of the Holodomor, which he said was “provoked by Soviet leaders.”
Mr Zelensky said he and Mr Berset discussed “humanitarian demining, the use of frozen assets of the aggressor country and a formula for peace.”
Switzerland's famous neutrality has been tested since Russia invaded to Ukraine – the Alpine country has followed the EU's lead on sanctions against Moscow, but has refused to allow countries that have Swiss-made weapons to send them to Kiev.
This came as Ukraine continued to call on Western allies, especially Germany and the United States, to increase supplies of weapons and armored vehicles.
War between Israel and Hamas
There is growing concern in Kiev that the war between Israel and Hamas has become a distraction its allies amid reports that Washington is redirecting ammunition destined for Ukraine to Israel.
A report citing government sources in the German tabloid Bild on Friday claimed that Berlin and Washington are trying to put pressure on Zelensky to negotiate with Putin in the near future.
The report, citing German sources in the coalition led by Chancellor Olaf Scholz, claims that Germany and the United States will send enough weapons and ammunition just to help Ukraine will maintain the current front lines.
This will force Zelensky to abandon attempts to return the occupied territories and move on to a meeting with Russia at the negotiating table, the report says. The United States, which, according to Bild sources, fully agrees with Berlin on this plan, has not yet given an answer.
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