Ukraine yesterday said it shot down most of the three dozen drones launched by Russia in an overnight attack mainly directed around the capital, Kyiv.
The latest attack came as Ukraine’s forces call for more Western support for their grueling counteroffensive to retake land in the east and south.
“We recorded the launch of 33 Shahed [drones] in the direction of Kyiv ... 26 were destroyed,” the Ukrainian Air Force said.
Photo: Reuters
Earlier, officials said that air defenses downed 25 out of 32 drones.
An Agence France-Presse journalist in the capital reported hearing multiple explosions — presumably from air defense — starting at about 1:30am.
“Drones entered the capital in groups and from different directions,” Serhiy Popko, head of the Kyiv City Military Administration, wrote on Telegram.
Debris fell in several districts, damaging an apartment in a multistory building, as well as road surfaces and power lines, he said, adding that one person was injured.
Ukrainian emergency services published photos of rescuers putting out fires in several districts.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said that a resident had an “acute stress attack” and was receiving medical assistance after debris fell in central Podil district.
Kyiv dealt with drone and missile attacks on an almost nightly basis in winter and spring last year, as Russia pounded cities across Ukraine in a bid to wipe out Ukraine’s energy infrastructure and destroy morale.
The strikes had since become less frequent, but last month the capital faced the “most powerful strike” since spring, with more than 20 drones and missiles destroyed.
As summer comes to a close, Klitschko on Tuesday last week told journalists that the city was already preparing for a “tough” winter.
In a conference in the capital on Friday and Saturday, officials said that the West should not waste any time and provide Kyiv with powerful arms to back up its army pushing Russian troops out of the territories it seized.
Newly appointed Ukrainian Minister of Defense Rustem Umerov called for more military equipment.
“We are grateful for all the support provided... We need more heavy weapons,” Umerov said.
“We need them today. We need them now,” he added.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that the provision of weapons was slowing down, hampering the counteroffensive against Russian positions.
On Saturday, a Spanish aid worker was killed when a missile hit the vehicle she was traveling in, Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs Jose Manuel Albares said yesterday.
“Unfortunately, I can confirm a missile hit a vehicle in which this Spanish worker was travelling who was working for a humanitarian NGO [non-governmental organization] in Ukraine. We have verbal confirmation of her death,” Albares told reporters in India where he attended the G20 meeting.
Albares did not name the aid worker.
A Canadian aid worker also died in the attack in Chasiv Yar, in the Donetsk region, authorities said.
Additional reporting by Reuters
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver