Air-raid sirens woke kyiv residents before a series of explosions. Attacks from “kamikaze drones” targeted, on Monday, October 17, a residential building in the Shevchenko district, in the city center of the capital, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on social networks. Other regions were affected, including that of Sumy (north-east). A new toll reports at least six dead (three in kyiv and three in the Sumy region).
According tomilitary administration of Kyiv, “four keystrokes were recorded” in the city which, since the beginning of last week, has again been targeted by Russian forces. “In the last 13 hours, the Ukrainian army shot down 37 Iranian Shahed-136 drones and three cruise missiles” Russians, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense announced on Twitter. An AFP journalist saw one of these drones descend on a building, while two kneeling police officers tried to shoot it down with their service weapons.
Elsewhere in the country, attacks have targeted critical infrastructure and left “hundreds of localities” without electricity, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Chmygal announced in the morning. “This morning, Russian terrorists again attacked Ukraine’s energy infrastructure in three regions”he lamented, citing in addition to drone strikes on the capital, “missile attacks” on the regions of Dnipropetrovsk (center-east) and Sumy (north-east). “Hundreds of localities are without electricity”. In the region of Sumy, there are nine wounded, according to Denys Chmygal.
In the south of the country, the army had previously explained that it had shot down on the night of Sunday to Monday 26 Iranian Shahed-136 aircraft, bought by Moscow according to the West and Ukraine, despite denials from Tehran.
In recent days, Ukraine has struck several military targets on Russian territory, in the border region of Belgorod.