Russian drone strikes on Kyiv region kill 27, officials say

Deadly warehouse strike

At least 27 people have died after a Russian drone struck a warehouse near Kyiv’s western suburbs overnight, authorities said on Saturday. The warehouse appeared to have been storing “explosive objects,” Ukrainian prosecutors said, opening an investigation into criminal negligence. Officials did not give details about the nature of the facility.

Kyiv region governor Tymur Tkachenko confirmed the death toll, saying, “Unfortunately, as things stand, 27 people are known to have died. And this figure may not be final.” AFP reporters saw a huge column of black smoke pouring over the capital’s western suburbs as officials reported the facility was still on fire.

Second day of attacks

The deadly strike came as Russian forces on Friday resumed their drone barrage of Ukraine’s Kyiv region, hitting more than a dozen apartment buildings and storage depots in a second straight day of aerial attacks, officials said. Russian strikes in the region damaged 14 warehouses, 16 private houses, three apartment buildings and 16 vehicles, Tkachenko said. The attacks killed one person and wounded two others, according to officials.

The prolonged air raids in Kyiv on Thursday essentially locked down the Ukrainian capital for 15 hours, the Foreign Ministry said, choking the economy and severely disrupting civilian life more than 4½ years after Russia’s full-scale invasion. Even longer alerts are a daily reality in regions closer to the front line, the Ministry said.

The State Emergency Service reported that a second drone hit one location after emergency crews were deployed, in what is termed by the military as a “double tap” that targets first responders.

The Russian Defense Ministry said its forces overnight struck a warehouse in the Kyiv region that stores Ukraine’s Flamingo cruise missiles and fuel for rocket boosters. Ukrainian officials did not immediately confirm the Russian claim.

Wider campaign

Russian drone and missile attacks are also aiming at the power grid in what Ukrainian officials say is an annual campaign to “weaponise winter.” In Ukraine’s southern Kherson region on the Black Sea, where glide bombs a day earlier forced a combined heat and power plant to shut down, officials predicted a winter of extended outages and told people to move elsewhere if they could. In the region, which is about 70% under Russian control, officials urged tens of thousands of residents to move to safer regions because of the possibility of prolonged power and heating outages this winter.

Russia has intensified attacks on critical infrastructure in the region, with 170 glide bombs dropped on the Kherson region since July 1 — more than in the first six months of the year, said Prokudin, the regional head. Russia has also launched more than 1,700 attack drones over the past two months, increasingly using jet-powered Shahed and Gerbera drones against critical infrastructure, he said, and attacks by smaller drones rose to 6,500 in the past week alone.

Russian forces fired 164 drones at Ukraine overnight, Ukraine’s air force said, without mentioning missiles, which are usually part of Russia’s aerial attacks. Russia is launching small numbers of fast-moving jet-powered drones in waves in an attempt to paralyze the capital, according to Andrii Kovalenko, head of Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation at the National Security and Defense Council.

Broader regional impact

The attacks extended beyond the Kyiv region. Four Russian glide bombs destroyed a sorting centre belonging to the postal service Nova Poshta in the northern Sumy region, and a drone smashed one of its depots in the Kyiv region, the company said. A 61-year-old man was killed, and seven other people were wounded Friday in a Russian glide bomb attack on the northern Sumy region, said Oleh Hryhorov, head of the Sumy regional military administration.

Ukrainian forces also continued their campaign against Russian territory. The Russian Defence Ministry said its air defences overnight shot down 512 Ukrainian drones over 18 Russian regions, as well as over the illegally annexed Crimean Peninsula and the waters of the Black Sea. Ukrainian forces struck the Slavneft-YANOS refinery in Russia’s Yaroslavl region overnight, causing a fire, Ukraine’s General Staff said. A Ukrainian drone attack on Friday morning in the Yaroslavl region killed one person and wounded 27 other people, Gov. Mikhail Yevrayev said.

In the Moscow region that surrounds but does not include the Russian capital, a drone hit a supermarket, damaging it and shattering windows in a nearby outpatient clinic, Gov. Andrei Vorobyov said on Telegram. In the port city of Sevastopol in Crimea, a five-story residential building suffered significant damage from a drone, according to the Russian-installed Governor of Sevastopol, Mikhail Razvozhayev. Four people were wounded, he said.

The recent strikes have damaged numerous warehouses across Kyiv and the wider region, including facilities storing books, food and other consumer goods. Both Russia and Ukraine have intensified long-range strikes on each other in recent months, sparking fires and sending civilian casualties to record levels.