This handout photo shows a damaged residential building following a Russian strike in Kiev region. (AFP Photo)
Russia launched a barrage of drones and ballistic missiles at Kiev and its surrounding region overnight, killing at least 12 people and wounding 21, Ukraine said on Sept. 1, hitting the capital as children were set to return to school after the summer.
Moscow has intensified its strikes on Kiev this summer, more than four-and-a-half years into its invasion, with U.S.-brokered talks frozen and the Kremlin not dropping its maximalist demands to end the war.
Kiev has tightened security following weeks of attacks and AFP journalists in the capital heard around a dozen loud explosions and saw flashes in the sky early on Sept. 1.
President Volodymyr Zelensky denounced “Russian terror” and said an Indian citizen was among the dead, calling on allies to boost Ukraine’s air defense this autumn.
Authorities said eight of the victims were killed within Kiev and that most of them were railway workers who died after a ballistic missile hit a rail depot.
Oleksandr Pertsovskyi, chief executive of Ukrainian Railways, said six of the company’s employees were killed.
He said the attack caused “extensive destruction,” including the complete devastation of a workshop, while fires continued to burn at some sites.
Another four people were killed in the Kiev region, Ukrainian prosecutors announced, saying a residential building was damaged in the suburb of Boryspil.
Zelensky said 50 people were evacuated from the building in Boryspil.
“Russia always plans its strikes specifically to cause as much destruction to people’s lives as possible, and it succeeds only when air defense capabilities are insufficient,” he said on social media.
He said it was “very important” that deliveries boosting Kiev’s air defense “increase this fall.”
EU defense and foreign ministers gathered in Ireland from Sept. 1 to grapple with how to bolster Kiev, as the Kremlin escalates its air campaign.
Ukraine’s border service also announced that Moscow had hit the Orlivka ferry checkpoint on the frontier with NATO-member Romania with “Shahed-type attack drones.”
Romania has shot down Russian drones entering its airspace twice this year.
Ukrainian officials also said Moscow had struck a “fire and rescue vehicle” in Zaporizhzhia, wounding four people, and attacked the southern Odesa region.
In Moscow, the Russian Defense Ministry said its forces had carried out a “massive strike” using long-range weapons and attack drones.
It said the attack targeted military-industrial and fuel and energy facilities in Kiev and the surrounding region.
The ministry also said it had struck infrastructure in the Odesa region and the ports of Odesa and Chornomorsk.
Ukrainian children returned to school on Sept. 1 and the Kiev regional military administration has warned there must be no large events in high-risk areas.
