Ukraine war: Russia launches first overnight drone attack on Kyiv in 12 days, says military

Official claims air defence systems destroyed all targets on approach

A Ukrainian soldier carries rockets as his team prepares to fire a recoilless gun toward Russian positions near Prechystivka, Ukraine. Photograph: David Guttenfelder/The New York Times
A Ukrainian soldier carries rockets as his team prepares to fire a recoilless gun toward Russian positions near Prechystivka, Ukraine. Photograph: David Guttenfelder/The New York Times

Russia launched a drone attack early on Sunday on Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, officials said, in the first such attack in 12 days.

All of the Iranian-made Shahed exploding drones were detected and shot down, according to Serhii Popko, the head of the Kyiv city administration.

In addition to the city itself, the surrounding Kyiv region was targeted.

Kyiv regional governor Ruslan Kravchenko reported that one person was wounded by falling debris from a destroyed drone.

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Ukraine’s military reported the most intense fighting continued in Ukraine’s industrial east, with attacks focused around Bakhmut, Marinka and Lyman in the country’s Donetsk province, where 46 combat clashes took place.

In its regular update on Sunday morning, the General Staff said that over the previous 24 hours, Russia had carried out 27 airstrikes, one missile strike and about 80 attacks from multiple rocket launchers, targeting regions in the north, north east, east and south of the country.

In Russia, local officials reported that air defence systems shot down a drone over the Belgorod region, which borders Ukraine, while the neighbouring Kursk region faced shelling attacks.

Yevgeny Prigozhin’s media holding group is to shut down, the director of one of its outlets said, highlighting the mercenary chief’s worsening fortunes a week after the collapse of a brief mutiny staged by his Wagner Group fighters.

Under a deal that halted the mutiny, Mr Prigozhin, a former ally of President Vladimir Putin, was allowed to go into exile in Belarus and his men given the choice of joining him, being integrated into Russia’s armed forces or returning home.

Patriot Media, whose most prominent outlet was the RIA FAN news site, had taken a strongly nationalist, pro-Kremlin editorial line, while also providing positive coverage of Mr Prigozhin and his Wagner Group.

“I am announcing our decision to close down and to leave the country’s information space,” RIA FAN director Yevgeny Zubarev said in a video clip posted late on Saturday on the holding’s social media accounts. He gave no reason for the decision.

Elsewhere, the ultra-nationalist Liberal Democratic Party of Russia is working on a Bill that would temporarily ban the travel of close relatives of high-ranking officials to “unfriendly countries,” the RIA state news agency reported on Sunday.

Russia considers all countries that have hit it with sanctions over its military campaign in Ukraine to be “unfriendly.”

Citing a member of the Russian Duma, Sergei Karginov, RIA reported that restrictions may also affect, among others, law enforcement officers, judges, top managers of state corporations, and the board of directors of the Central Bank.

“Now, when Russia is forced to confront a group of Western countries led by the United States that provoked a conflict in Ukraine, such journeys ... are not only inadmissible, but also dangerous,” RIA cited Mr Karginov as saying. – Reuters