Around 80 residential blocks and more than 100 buildings in Kiev were left without electricity this Saturday, following a massive attack by Russian drones (unmanned flying devices) on the capital overnight, Ukrainian authorities reported.
“On the morning of November 25, a large-scale drone attack in the capital cut an electrical supply line,” Ukraine’s Energy Ministry said in a statement.
“As a result, 77 residential buildings and 120 buildings in the central part of the city are left without electricity,” he added.
Ukraine accused Moscow of carrying out the largest drone attack against kyiv since the start of the country’s invasion in February 2022.
The Ukrainian air force said on Saturday it had shot down 71 ‘Shahed’ attack drones launched by Russia. “Most of them were destroyed in the kyiv region,” the Ukrainian government said on social media.
Five people, including an 11-year-old boy, were injured in the Russian offensive, according to local authorities in kyiv.
The aerial alert in the capital lasted six hours and falling debris from drones caused fires and damage to buildings in the capital, Kiev Mayor Vitali Klitschko said.
“The enemy continues to spread terror,” he added, recalling the beginning of the Russian invasion, on February 24, 2022.
Drone attacks, symptomatic of the war in Ukraine, have multiplied in recent months, carried out by forces from kyiv and Moscow.
On Friday, Russia claimed to have destroyed 16 Ukrainian drones in the south of the country and over the Crimean peninsula, annexed by Russia in 2014 and regularly attacked by Kiev due to its strategic position in the Black Sea.
On the same day, the Ukrainian military declared that its air defense systems had shot down three Iranian-made attack drones launched by Russian forces overnight.
The attack takes place on the day Ukraine commemorates the Holodomor, the famine caused in the country by the Soviets 90 years ago, which resulted in the death of several million people.
“More than 70 [drones] fell during the night of the Holodomor commemoration […]. “Russian leaders are proud of their ability to kill,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky reacted on social media.
Regarding the event, Zelensky stated that it was “impossible” to forgive the “crimes of genocide” committed by the Soviets during the Stalin era against Ukrainians during the great famine of the 1930s.
“It is impossible to forget, understand and, above all, forgive the horrible crimes of genocide that Ukrainians suffered in the 20th century,” he declared in a press release on the day of commemoration of the 1932-1933 famine.
Source: TSF
