Russian strikes kill eight as drones hit Kyiv

KYIV — Russia on Monday stepped up attacks across Ukraine, cutting electricity in "hundreds" of towns and killing eight people, including four in kamikaze drone strikes in the capital Kyiv.

Moscow is thought to be trying to counter battlefield losses by waging a punitive policy of damaging energy facilities before winter in a move that President Vladimir Putin hopes will weaken Ukrainian resistance in the eight-month war.

Ukraine said four were killed in Kyiv, including a married couple expecting a baby, and another four in the northeast region of Sumy, with its foreign minister demanding EU sanctions on Iran, accusing Tehran of providing Russia with drones.

"I saw a bright orange splash... The house trembled," said resident Tamara Beroshvili.

"We were scared," agreed Yevgeniya Sakharuk. "It was very close to our apartment, and we heard a lot of anti-aircraft work and it sounded like automatic fire."

The Russian army said it hit “all” its targets, having aimed “high-precision and long-range... weapons at military command and control facilities and the energy systems of Ukraine”.

Prime Minister Denys Shmygal said Russia launched five strikes in Kyiv and against energy facilities in Sumy and the central Dnipropetrovsk regions, knocking out electricity to hundreds of towns and villages.

“A husband and wife who were expecting a child. The woman was six months pregnant,” said Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko on social media, identifying two of the dead.

Emergency services later said power was restored in Sumy.

“Hundreds of settlements were cut off as a result of the attack,” Shmygal had said earlier, referring to all regions.

An AFP journalist saw drones swooping low over central Kyiv as police tried to shoot them down with automatic weapons and smoke rose from explosions across the city.

‘Expelled’ from G-20 

The attack comes exactly a week after Russia missiles rained down on Kyiv and other cities on October 10 in the biggest wave of strikes in months.

Those attacks killed at least 19 people, wounded 105 others and sparked an international outcry.

“They seem to be hitting us every Monday now,” said taxi driver Sergiy Prikhodko, who was waiting for a fare near the central train station in Kyiv.

“It’s a new way of starting the week,” he told AFP.

Air raid sirens sounded in Kyiv shortly before the first explosion at around 6:35am (03:35 GMT), followed by sirens across most of the country.

“Kamikaze drones and missiles are attacking all of Ukraine. The enemy can attack our cities, but it won’t be able to break us,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said.

“Those who give orders to attack critical infrastructure, to freeze civilians and organise total mobilisation to cover the frontline with corpses, cannot sit at the same table with leaders of [the] G-20,” senior presidential aide Mykhaylo Podolyak said.

In a statement on social media, he called for Russia to be “expelled from all platforms”.

Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba called on the EU to sanction Iran, accusing Tehran of supplying drones to Russia. Iran denies exporting any weapons to either side.

“We need more air defence systems and as soon as possible. More weapons,” Zelensky’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, said on social media.

NATO drills 

In Moscow, the city’s mayor Sergei Sobyanin announced that Russian army draft offices would close from Monday, saying the Kremlin’s mobilisation quotas to recruit reservists to fight in Ukraine had been completed in the capital.

“The tasks of the partial mobilisation” — announced just over a month ago — in the city had been “completed in full”, Sobyanin said on his website.

On Monday, NATO launched regular nuclear deterrence drills in western Europe, which were planned before Russia invaded Ukraine, rejecting calls to scrap the exercises after Putin ratcheted up veiled threats to launch a nuclear attack.

The exercises will involve US B-52 long-range bombers, and up to 60 aircraft in total will take part in training flights over Belgium, the United Kingdom and the North Sea.

In Geneva, new UN rights chief Volker Turk voiced alarm about Monday’s Russian strikes.

“Any escalation in warfare is deeply troubling to us,” Turk told reporters on his first day on the job. “It is absolutely important that civilian objects, civilians, are not targeted,” he said.

In the south, Ukrainian troops have been pushing closer and closer to the large city of Kherson, just north of Crimea.

Kherson is one of four regions in Ukraine that Moscow recently claimed to have annexed.

Washington last week announced a new $725 million package that brings the total US military assistance to Ukraine to $17.6 billion since the Russian invasion began on February 24.