During the night, Russia carried out its largest drone attack on Ukraine since the beginning of the war, primarily targeting Kiev, the Ukrainian Air Force announced, reports Reuters.
Reuters witnesses in Kiev heard drone engines and explosions throughout the night.
Five people were wounded in the attack, while the continuous rumble of anti-aircraft fire and explosions woke residents. The attack began to hit different districts of Kyiv in the early hours of Saturday morning, with more waves coming as the sun rose.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Russia launched over 70 Iranian-made Shahed drones at Ukraine overnight, most of which were shot down.
Zelensky said the attack, which occurred in the early hours of a day when Ukraine commemorates the Holodomor that killed several million Ukrainians, was an act of "deliberate terror".
The Holodomor is a mass famine that occurred in Ukraine in the period between 1932 and 1933, when that country was part of the former Soviet Union.
A spokesman for the Kyiv city administration told Suspilna public service that at least 40 drones were shot down. Mayor Vitalij Klitschko said that five people were injured in the attack, including an 11-year-old girl, and buildings were damaged in districts across the city. Fragments of the downed drone caused a fire in the kindergarten, he said.
The target of the attack was not immediately clear, but Ukraine has warned in recent weeks that Russia will resume an air campaign to destroy the country's energy system, as it tried to do last winter. Ukraine's energy ministry said nearly 200 buildings in the capital, including 77 residential ones, were left without power as a result of the attack.
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