A new wave of Russian drone and missile attacks hit a residential building and power facilities in Kyiv and caused damage in other Ukrainian cities on Monday, sending people scrambling for cover in the morning rush hour.
\nThree people, including a pregnant woman, were killed in the second strikes on the Ukrainian capital in a week when a \u201ckamikaze\u201d drone hit a brick residential building on the edge of the central Shevchenkivskyi district, the city mayor said.
\nExplosions and gunfire echoed as security forces tried to shoot down the drones with automatic weapons. One old woman, hobbling with difficulty, was led to safety by a police officer.
\n\u201cThis is already a tradition: to wake Ukrainians with missiles on Mondays,\u201d said Alla Voloshko, a 47-year-old lawyer who took shelter in the basement of her apartment block.
\nThick smoke billowed onto the street as firefighters picked through the rubble after the side of an apartment block collapsed. Rubble tumbled to the ground even as they dug.
\nVoloshko shook her head at the destruction but said she had no intention to flee: \u201cI\u2019m calm. I\u2019m not scared \u2026 we will stay at home, we will stay in Kyiv as long as it\u2019s possible.\u201d
\nOleksiy, a 70-year-old retiree, said he was driving his wife to work in Kyiv when he saw reports of the blasts on his phone.
\n\u201cThe anger grows in me each time. I\u2019m not scared. I\u2019m scared for my dog,\u201d he said.
\nAir attacks were reported in several areas exactly a week after Russia launched the heaviest missile strikes since the early days of its February 24 invasion.
\n\u201cAll night and all morning, the enemy terrorises the civilian population. Kamikaze drones and missiles are attacking all of Ukraine,\u201d President Volodymyr Zelenskiy wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
\nSome deaths were also reported outside the capital as Russia deployed more than 40 drones, most of which were taken out by Ukrainian air defences, the interior minister told reporters. He did not give a more precise casualty toll.
\nEnergy facilities targeted
\nUkraine\u2019s national grid operator said energy infrastructure in central and northern Ukrainian regions had been hit but that the power system remained under control. It urged Ukrainians to minimise their use of electricity so as not to put more pressure on the creaking national power system.
\nRussia said it had hit military targets and energy infrastructure. It has denied deliberately targeting civilians.
\nIn Kyiv, a Reuters reporter saw pieces of a drone that had been used in the attacks and bore the words: \u201cFor Belgorod.\u201d
\nThe governor of the Russian region of Belgorod close to the border with Ukraine has accused Ukrainian forces of repeatedly shelling the region.
\nIn the city of Mykolaiv in the south, a drone hit the Everi marine terminal around 10pm on Sunday night, damaging sunflower oil storage tanks, and setting aflame leaking oil, said Andriy, 47, a senior manager who declined to give his last name.
\nIt took more than five hours to extinguish the flames ignited by the attack, the second on the storage facility on the Buh River since June, said Andriy.
\nThe terminal, he said, is the largest of its kind in Ukraine involved in exporting sunflower oil, of which the country is a major producer.
\n\u201cThis is an entirely civilian facility. There is no military,\u201d he said, asserting that the attacks were part of a Russian effort to \u201cdestroy the economy and to destroy food security\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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