Ukraine shoots down 16 drones launched by Russia overnight
Lviv, Ukraine, Dec 30 (EFE).- Ukraine’s Air Force has shot down 16 Russian kamikaze drones in southeast and northern Ukraine, authorities reported on Friday.
“The enemy attacked Ukraine with Iranian-made Shahed-131/136 kamikaze drones on the night of 29-30 December,” a statement from Ukraine’s armed forces said, according to news outlet Ukrainska Pravda.
“In total, 16 Shahed drones, attacking Ukraine from the south-eastern and northern fronts, were launched,” the statement added. “In order to get past Ukraine’s air defence systems, the enemy was trying to use the estuary of the Dnipro River.”
Kyiv mayor, Vitaliy Klitschko, said seven drones that were heading for the capital were intercepted, the Ukrainian Ukrinform news agency reported.
“According to the report by our air defense forces, seven kamikaze drones were flying toward Kyiv. Two of them were shot down on the approach to the capital, and five – over Kyiv,” Klitschko said on Telegram.
The windows of several buildings were damaged by debris but no casualties were reported, the Kyiv mayor confirmed.
Ukrainian troops also shot down nine Iranian Shahed drones in the Dnipro (central Ukraine) and Zaporizhzhia (southeast) regions.
In his daily video address to the nation, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy reported power outages across the country on Thursday night.
“With each such missile strike, Russia is only driving itself deeper into a dead end. They have fewer and fewer missiles,” Zelenskyy said.
Russia has intensified its shelling of Ukraine in recent days targeting key infrastructure networks.
“Each missile only confirms that all this must end with a tribunal,” Zelenskyy warned in his address.
The president said that the eastern city of Bakhmut in the Donetsk region was facing the “most acute situation.”
Ukrainian and Russian troops continue to engage in vicious fighting in Ukraine’s eastern front, where both sides are battling for small territorial gains at a cost of high death tolls.
Intense battles in the east are particularly concentrated around the mining city of Bakhmut.
Located some 65 kilometers to the north of Donetsk — the capital of the region of the same name, much of which has been under pro-Russian control since 2014 — Bakhmut is a strategic crossroads for transportation and communication.EFE
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