Kyiv, Sept 3:
Russian aerial attacks on Ukraine’s Kyiv and Odesa regions wounded at least eight civilians on Wednesday, as Moscow and Kyiv exchanged fresh threats amid an intensifying air war.
Ukrainian officials said Russian drones and missiles struck residential and civilian infrastructure overnight and into the morning. In Odesa, a 24-storey residential building was damaged, with apartments on several floors affected and eight people, including a child, injured.
Office buildings and two educational facilities were also damaged in Odesa, while the attacks disrupted electricity supplies and brought electric-powered public transport to a halt.
The Kyiv region also came under attack, with a man and a woman wounded by shrapnel. It was the seventh consecutive day that Kyiv had been targeted, although officials said the latest barrage was less intense than attacks on previous days.
Ukraine’s Air Force said Russia launched 174 attack drones, including around half that were jet-powered, along with two ballistic missiles and two aircraft-launched missiles.
The escalation was accompanied by increasingly sharp rhetoric from both sides. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned foreign airlines that Russian airspace was becoming unsafe because of Ukrainian long-range drone operations. Russian President Vladimir Putin accused Ukraine of “state terrorism” and declined to rule out strikes on British military facilities if the UK continued supplying weapons to Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Russia said its air defences had destroyed 130 Ukrainian drones over several regions, Crimea and the Black Sea. Ukrainian drone attacks in Russia’s Belgorod region reportedly killed two people and wounded 16.
Western analysts said Russia’s recent battlefield advances remained slow and limited, with its spring-summer offensive failing to break through Ukrainian defences.