Russia and Ukraine have fired dozens of attack drones at each other’s cities, as Kyiv urged western allies to provide more air defence systems urgently to protect the Ukrainian power grid through the winter and boost security for grain shipments across the Black Sea.
Russia said at least 24 drones were shot down on Sunday over the Moscow region and the Tula, Kaluga, Bryansk and Smolensk provinces to the south and west of the capital, and that two missiles were intercepted over the Sea of Azov as they flew towards Crimea, which the Kremlin illegally annexed in 2014.
One person was injured when a drone hit an apartment block in the city of Tula, and international airports in Moscow briefly suspended flights early on Sunday, a day after Russia launched its biggest drone attack on Kyiv since the start of its all-out invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Russian-installed official Denis Pushilin said large parts of occupied territory in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region were without heat and light on Sunday morning due to a drone strike on local power infrastructure.
Ukraine said its military destroyed 74 of 75 Russian drones fired in the early hours of Saturday, 66 of which were brought down over Kyiv and the surrounding region. Five people were hurt during an air attack that lasted for more than six hours, and falling debris also damaged dozens of residential and other buildings.
Energy officials said the attack caused power cuts that affected some 17,000 people in the Kyiv region, but electricity was restored after a few hours, as snowfall and freezing temperatures set in at the start of a winter when Ukraine expects to see a repeat of last year’s intense Russian missile and drone strikes on the energy grid and other critical infrastructure.
“Each day and night, our defenders of the sky are on combat duty. They destroy enemy missiles and drones, save lives and protect critical infrastructure ... Thank you for saving our people, our cities and communities. We are doing our best to make the Ukrainian sky shield more powerful,” said Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
“There is a deficit of air defence – that is no secret,” he told the Grain from Ukraine conference in Kyiv, which aimed to strengthen international co-operation to safeguard southern Ukrainian ports via a shipping route in the western Black Sea that Ukraine opened to bypass a Russian naval blockade further east.
Mr Zelenskiy said Ukraine had received a “positive signal” from allies on when additional air defence systems would start protecting the corridor, which hugs the coastline of southern Ukraine and Nato members Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey.
He also said an agreement with Britain was in place to provide insurance for shipping firms using the corridor, and that Ukraine was ready to provide an escort to vessels using the route and was “already receiving appropriate naval boats for this purpose”.
Meanwhile, heavy fighting continued in eastern Ukraine, where Kyiv said its forces were repelling Russian units that were trying to seize the towns of Avdiivka and Kupiansk.
