KYIV, Ukraine (AP) – 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.
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 of its neighbor. Even longer alerts are a daily reality in regions closer to the front line, the ministry said.
Russian drone and missile attacks are also taking aim at the power grid in what Ukrainian officials say is an annual campaign to “weaponize 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.
Russian strikes in the Kyiv region damaged 14 warehouses, 16 private houses, three apartment buildings and 16 vehicles, Tymur Tkachenko, head of the Kyiv regional military administration, said Friday.
A second drone hit one location after emergency crews were deployed, the State Emergency Service said, in what is termed by the military as a “double tap” that targets first responders.
The attacks killed one person and wounded two others, according to officials.
The Russian Defense Ministry said that its forces overnight struck a warehouse in the Kyiv region that stores Ukraine´s Flamingo cruise missiles and fuel for rocket boosters.
Ukrainian officials didn’t immediately confirm the Russian claim, and The Associated Press couldn’t verify it. Recent strikes have damaged numerous warehouses across Kyiv and the wider region, including facilities storing books, food and other consumer goods.
The attacks stretched into daylight hours, and Tkachenko urged residents to stay in safe locations and heed air raid alerts.
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.
“The goal is to exhaust air defenses and the population,” he said on social media on Friday.
Kyiv region authorities said that air quality worsened because of the attacks and warned people in some areas to keep their windows closed and limit their time outdoors.
Four Russian glide bombs destroyed a sorting center 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.
In the southern Kherson 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.
“Kherson may be without electricity and heat not for hours or days, but for a long time. And we need to prepare for this now,” said Oleksandr Prokudin, head of the Kherson regional military administration, in a social media post late Thursday.
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, Prokudin said.
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.
Authorities will offer help with evacuation, transportation, resettlement and social support for those who decide to leave, he said.
Russia fired 164 drones at Ukraine overnight, Ukraine´s air force said. It didn´t mention missiles, which usually are part of Russia´s aerial attacks.
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.
The Russian Defense Ministry said that its air defenses 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, as Ukraine continued its campaign against the Russian oil sector.
A fire broke out at the site, which is around 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) from the border with Ukraine, the General Staff said. The plant produces gasoline, diesel and aviation fuel, fuel oil, lubricants and other petroleum products, it added.
A Ukrainian drone attack on Friday morning in the Yaroslavl region killed one person and wounded 27 other people, Gov. Mikhail Yevrayev said. Ten of those were wounded when drone debris fell on a bus, he said.
He said that unspecified “industrial infrastructure,” residential areas and unidentified retail facilities were hit.
In the Moscow region that surrounds but doesn’t 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. He posted images of a charred building with windows and balconies knocked out.