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Russia hammered Ukraine with missiles and drones on Saturday, killing six people and inflicting damage across several regions of the country, Ukrainian officials said. Five of those killed were in the Kyiv region outside the capital, where Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russian forces targeted energy infrastructure but also damaged residential buildings, schools and businesses. Fifteen people were injured.
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The Ukrainian president said the Sumy, Kharkiv, Dnipro and Mykolaiv regions were also targeted in an attack that included about 430 drones and 68 missiles, most of which were downed by air defences. “The main target for the Russians was the energy infrastructure of the Kyiv region, but unfortunately, there were also direct hits on and damage to ordinary residential buildings, schools, and civilian businesses,” Zelenskyy said.
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A Russian strike later in the afternoon on a residential area in the Zaporizhzhia suburbs killed one and wounded 18, including two children, the local administration said. Reuters footage showed emergency crews at work amid piles of rubble and twisted metal. Windows and frames on balconies were smashed.
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Russia’s winter attacks on Ukraine have left swathes of major cities without power or heating, part of a campaign to weaken resolve as Moscow’s troops press a battlefield offensive and demand Kyiv cede more territory in the east. Ukraine’s energy ministry said on Saturday that people in six regions were without electricity after the overnight strikes and Russian shelling of frontline areas.
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Saturday’s attack also prompted Nato member Poland to scramble jets to protect its airspace, but no violations were observed, Warsaw’s military said. In Moldova, on Ukraine’s western border, the foreign ministry denounced what it said was an intrusion by a Russian drone into its airspace in a border district, saying Moscow’s actions undermined regional security and posed a danger to its citizens.
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Zelenskyy repeated his call for Kyiv’s partners to boost production of air defence weapons, stocks of which have been diminishing as the US and its allies in the Gulf, fending off Iranian strikes. The UK’s prime minister Keir Starmer may send thousands of interceptor drones to the Middle East, the Telegraph reported on Saturday. Military officials are examining whether the “Octopus” interceptor anti-drone drone system, which is manufactured in the UK for Ukraine to use against Russia, can also be used to bolster British defences against Iran’s Shahed drones, the report said.
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Russian air defence units downed 65 Ukrainian drones headed for Moscow throughout the day on Saturday, the city’s mayor Sergei Sobyanin said. Sobyanin, writing on Telegram, said the drones were intercepted over an 11-hour period beginning around noon. Crews were examining the fragments at the sites where they fell. The governor of the Bryansk region on the Ukrainian border, Alexander Bogomaz, said on Telegram that units in his region had downed 128 drones. He gave no time frame.
