Ukraine Downs Eight Iranian Drones Russia Launched Against Kyiv

Russia launched an overnight drone attack on Kyiv after a 12-day break, with air defense systems destroying all the UAVs, Ukrainian military officials said Sunday.

The country's air force said that the attack included eight Iranian-made Shahed drones and three cruise missiles which were shot down.

"Another enemy attack on Kyiv," Serhiy Popko, a colonel general who heads Kyiv's military administration, said in a post on the Telegram channel.

Iran has supplied hundreds of Shahed kamikaze drones to Russia since mid-2022, angering the United States and its key European allies who have imposed sanctions on a host of companies and individuals involved in their production and shipment to Russia.

Washington has demanded that Tehran should stop its supply of weapons to Moscow if it wants to reach a new nuclear agreement and see US sanctions lifted.

Although Ukrainian forces quickly learned to shoot down most Iranian drones, Russia uses the cheap weapon to overwhelm air defenses and force Ukraine to use much more expensive Western anti-air missiles.

Three private houses were damaged as a result of falling drone debris in the Kyiv region, injuring one person, the military head of the region, Ruslan Kravchenko, said on his Facebook page.

Reuters witnesses heard blasts resembling the sound of air defense systems hitting targets. There was no immediate information about the scale of the attack.

Kyiv, its surrounding region and a number of central and eastern Ukraine's regions were under air raid alerts for about an hour after 2 a.m. local time (2300 GMT).

With reporting by Reuters, The Kyiv Independent