After a few days of relative calm, Russia launched a nighttime drone attack on Kyiv and the surrounding region yesterday after a twelve-day break. However, the military administration of the capital reported that the air defense systems destroyed all the drones and the attack only caused one person to be injured.
The Ukrainian Air Force said eight Iranian-made Shahed drones and three cruise missiles took part in the Russian attack, all of which were shot down.
“Another enemy attack against Kyiv,” said Serhí Popko, the colonel-general who heads Kyiv’s military administration, via Telegram.
Three private houses were damaged as a result of debris falling from drones in the Kyiv region, and one person was injured, the region’s military chief, Ruslan Kravchenko, said on Facebook. “Unfortunately, a resident of one of the buildings was injured. He was wounded in the leg. He was provided with the necessary medical assistance,” added Kravchenko.
On Sunday night, an anti-aircraft alert was declared in Kyiv and most of the southern and eastern regions of the country due to the possibility of Russian attacks with drones or ballistic missiles.
Russia has stepped up nightly bombardment of Ukraine with explosive drones and missiles since May, when Kyiv began a long-awaited counteroffensive in the east and south of the country, occupied by Russian troops.
In Russia, local officials reported that air defense systems shot down a drone over the Belgorod region, which borders Ukraine, while the neighboring Kursk region had come under shelling with no casualties or damage reported.
After the drama of the rebellion of the head of the Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, a week ago, the Russian authorities remained defiant. Vyacheslav Volodin, president of the Duma, assured on Sunday that the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, came out of the failed coup attempt “having strengthened his position even more both in the country and in the world”.
According to Volodin, “there was not a single example of someone supporting the rebellion.” But General Sergei Surovikin, deputy commander of Russian forces in Ukraine, is believed to have been arrested days after the riot. It is unclear whether Surovikin, who has long-standing ties to Prigozhin, is charged with any crime or where he is being held, reflecting the opacity of Kremlin policy and the uncertainty following the revolt.
In addition, the Duma speaker said that after analyzing Russia’s past “challenges” he believed that if “someone like Putin” had been at the head of the country in 1917 or 1991, there would not have been a revolution in Russia and the USSR would not have collapsed.
