Russia fired its biggest barrage of loitering munitions to date at Ukraine overnight as Kyiv prepares to commemorate victims of the 1930s famine orchestrated by Soviet leader Josef Stalin to force Ukrainian peasants onto collective farms.
Ukraine’s air defense said it shot down 71 of 75 Shahed-131/136 drones aimed mainly toward the capital region and launched from two directions within Russia. It also shot down one Russian Kh-59 cruise missile in the Dnipropetrovsk region of Ukraine’s east.
The overnight attack caused electricity to be shut off to hundreds of people in Kyiv and the surrounding region, the provider said Saturday morning as temperatures dipped to around freezing. The air alert in Kyiv lasted for about six hours.
Falling debris from a drone set a fire in a kindergarten, while some apartment buildings were damaged and five people were wounded, said Mayor Vitali Klitschko.
Ukraine on Saturday is commemorating the 90th anniversary of a yearlong famine, known as the Holomodor, which resulted in the deaths of at least 7 million people in 1932-1933.
The forced starvation, which was kept out of history books until Ukraine got independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, has been recognized as an act of genocide by 28 countries and three international organizations. Russia denies it was man-made and claims the famine resulted from drought.
Today "it was a deliberate terror,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a post on Telegram of the overnight attacks. "Russia’s leadership appears to be proud of its ability to kill people.”