Here’s what we know:
The Iranian-made drones were intercepted by Ukrainian air defense systems. Russia has focused attacks on infrastructure for weeks as the harsh winter sets in.
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Ukraine’s capital wakes to explosions as air defenses shoot down drones.
The Kyiv attack suggests that Russia may have resolved a glitch with Iranian-made drones.
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- Ukraine’s capital wakes to explosions as air defenses shoot down drones.
KYIV, Ukraine — Russia attacked Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, before dawn on Wednesday with a swarm of 13 Iranian-made drone, most of which were shot down by Ukrainian air defenses, according to Ukrainian officials.
The morning attack on the capital followed similar strikes on the Black Sea port of Odesa over the weekend that seemed to end a weekslong pause in Russia’s use the weapons.
Two government buildings in Kyiv and at least four homes in the region surrounding the capital were damaged, officials said, but it was unclear whether they were hit by direct strikes or falling debris from drones shot out of the sky. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine praised the air defense systems in a brief video message published on the Telegram messaging app and said that all of the drones appeared to have been shot down.
Kyiv and other parts of Ukraine have been subject to Russian missile attacks that have taken out power and other infrastructure as the country heads into the cold winter months.
Kyrylo O. Budanov, the head of Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, told Ukrainian media in October that Russia had used about 330 Iranian-made Shahed-136 drones in the war against Ukraine, of which 222 had been shot down.
Mr. Budanov said Russia had ordered about 1,700 drones, which were being delivered in batches of 300 at a time. It was not possible to independently verify the claims, but they correspond with estimates from Western officials and military analysts.
The first sound that Yaroslav Vinokurov, 24, heard Wednesday shortly before 6 a.m. was the wailing of the air-raid alarm in the darkness. He continued to get ready for work, given that alarms sound nearly every day. But soon machine-gun fire echoed through the Shevchenkivskyi district as air-defense systems flashed in the sky, followed by what he described as “a very loud explosion.”
“I lay down on the floor, as I didn’t know what else can happen,” Mr. Vinokurov said. Only once it was quiet did he go outside.
The roof of a nearby government building was damaged, and debris littered the area. “My car is destroyed,” he said, looking over the damage.<<<< Grab Your $10,000 Now>>>>
Residents rushed to put sheets, blankets and whatever else they could find onto damaged windows to protect themselves from the bitter cold. It was 23 degrees Fahrenheit — well below freezing — when the sun rose about 7:50 a.m.
Just two days before the strikes, Yurii Ihnat, the spokesman for Ukraine’s Air Force, warned that Russian forces were now using attack drones at night. If the drones are launched during the day, he said, Ukrainians can use large-caliber machine guns and other small arms to shoot them down. But in the darkness, they need expensive and limited air defense missile systems that can track the incoming drones by radar.
Even in the darkness, residents of the capital have become familiar with the sounds of Russia’s unrelenting aerial bombardment.
The Kyiv attack suggests that Russia may have resolved a glitch with Iranian-made drones.
KYIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian officials and military experts have been wondering for weeks whether a pause in drone strikes meant that Moscow had a glitch in its drone program. A Russian drone attack on the Ukrainian capital early Wednesday suggested that if there was such a glitch, it is now fixed.
When the small Iranian-made exploding drone first appeared on Ukrainian battlefields in August, it was the craft’s first use outside the Middle East. Russia fired flurries at Ukrainian cities and the country’s electrical grid and power stations in a series of attacks in October and early November — but then paused large-scale drone attacks.
Ukrainian officials and military analysts said that Russia had either run out or was running low on Iranian drones or that the colder, moister weather in Europe in wintertime had interfered with their operation. The Institute for the Study of War, a United States-based research group, on Dec. 7 cited comments by Ukrainian officials suggesting that the drones — made for a warmer, arid climate — had been susceptible to the freezing conditions in Ukraine, but that Russian engineers had resolved the problem.
A salvo of the drones, known as Shahed-136, fired last week on Odesa was the first in three weeks to hit Ukraine. But some uncertainty about the weapon’s compatibility with colder weather lingered. Natalia Humeniuk, a spokeswoman for Ukraine’s southern military command, noted on Sunday that the flurry fired had coincided with above-freezing weather. “The Russians tried to adjust them to the weather conditions,” she said.
Ms. Humeniuk said the drones were vulnerable to the formation of ice on their wings or flight-control surfaces. “They were most concerned about aerodynamics, the possibility of icing in case of temperature changes,” she said.
In Kyiv on Wednesday, it was 23 degrees Fahrenheit, well below freezing, when the sun rose.
The war in Ukraine has been a sort of beta test for drone combat, carefully watched by militaries and developers around the world. The Iranian Shahed-136 drone, whose 80-pound bombs detonate on impact, can be fired in swarms from a flatbed truck. It is among dozens of types of drones, including remote-controlled and programmable flying bombs, being used in Ukraine.
The United States has supplied Ukraine with its Switchblade flying bomb drones, and Ukraine has also deployed Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2 drones firing guided missiles. Russia has lagged for years in drone development and does not have a domestically produced long-range strike drone.
During the pause in firing Iranian Shahed-136 drones, Russia struck targets with its Lancet drones, according to Ukrainian battlefield updates. That short-range model is mostly used along the front line.