Ukraine Invation: Kyiv comes under suicide drone attacks as intense fighting near Donetsk towns

The central district of Ukraine’s capital has been rocked by explosions after a drone fired on buildings in Kyiv on Monday morning for the second time in a week.

Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitshchko confirms the blasts, during the city’s busy rush hour, have damaged several residential buildings.

The chief of Ukraine’s presidential office, Andriy Yermak, wrote on the Telegram messaging app that Russia carried out attacks using unmanned aerial vehicles.

The capital has been attacked by “kamikaze drones”, Andriy Yermak, head of the Ukrainian president’s staff,

Several explosions hit the Shevchenkivskyi district after 8 a.m. (0700 CET), when many people rush to work or school, just over an hour after the first wave of explosions was reported.

It comes exactly one week after Russian strikes on the Ukrainian capital.

Earlier, three explosions were heard successively at around 06:35, 06:45, and 06:58 (05:35, 05:45, and 05:58 CET). The air raid sirens had sounded shortly before the first explosion.

Last Monday, Russian bombings on a scale not seen for months hit Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities, killing at least 19 people and injuring 105 others and causing an international outcry.

Meanwhile, intense fighting between Russian and Ukrainian forces was taking place around two towns in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, Bakhmut and Soledar, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Sunday.

“The key hot spots in Donbas are Soledar and Bakhmut,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address. “Very heavy fighting is going on there.”

Bakhmut has been a target of Russia’s armed forces in their slow move through the region since taking the key industrial towns of Lysychansk and Sievierodonetsk in June and July. Soledar is located just north of Bakhmut.

Earlier on Sunday, Russian forces shelled Ukrainian positions on several fronts, the General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces said, with the targets including towns in Kharkiv, Donetsk, and Kherson regions.

Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions — which make up the larger industrial Donbas, and the strategically important Kherson province in the south — constitute three of the four provinces Putin proclaimed as part of Russia last month, moves dismissed by Ukraine and its Western allies as illegitimate.

Russia’s defence ministry said on Sunday its forces had repelled efforts by Ukrainian troops to advance in the Donetsk, Kherson, and Mykolaiv regions, inflicting what it described as significant losses.

Moscow also claimed it was using long-range precision-guided weapons in continued air strikes on military and energy targets in Ukraine.

Rybar, a pro-Russian military channel on Telegram, said Ukrainian armed forces again shelled Belgorod, a town in southern Russia that serves as a staging ground for Russian forces.

Anti-aircraft units intercepted most of the attacks, but there were two explosions near the airport. Three people were injured, it said.

Shelling by Ukrainian forces damaged the administration building in the city of Donetsk, the capital of the Donetsk region, the head of its Russian-backed administration said on Sunday.

There was no immediate reaction from Ukraine to the attack on Donetsk city, which was annexed by Russian-backed separatists in 2014 along with swathes of the Donbas.

Kremlin-backed separatist authorities have previously accused Ukraine of numerous strikes on infrastructure and residential targets in the occupied regions, without providing corroborating information.

LENS with Reuters, AFP