Debris from a downed drone was found outside Ukraine’s parliament building on Saturday morning after the country’s defense systems largely succeeded in fending off a widescale drone attack launched overnight by Russia.
Ukraine managed to shoot down 58 of the 67 Shahed drones launched by Russia, the Ukrainian Air Force said in a Telegram post on Saturday. The attack targeted multiple locations including the northeastern city of Sumy, the southern city of Kherson, the central region of Poltava and the capital of Kyiv.
The head of Kyiv’s military administration, Serhii Popko, described it as “another massive drone attack” on the city, in a post on his Telegram channel.
At least one drone appeared to have been shot down over the Ukrainian parliament as pictures shared online by the parliament showed debris scattered outside the building’s entrance.
Kyiv’s air defenses managed to shoot down all of the Russian drones which began approaching the city at around 3am local time (8pET), Popko said, with none of the drones managing to reach their targets.
There were no hits to critical or residential infrastructure during the attack, the region’s military chief, Ruslan Kravchenko said in a separate Telegram post. No casualties have been reported from the attack either, which saw air raid sirens sound for over eight hours, Kravchenko added.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has been lobbying strongly in recent days for further air defenses for Ukraine in the face of a barrage of Russian attacks across the country.
Addressing a forum in Italy on Friday, Zelensky highlighted how Russia has launched “missiles, attack drones, and heavy aircraft bombs” against Ukrainian cities and villages. “Big, small, it doesn’t matter for them,” he added.
On September 1 and 2, the western city of Kharkiv came under respective missile and bomb attacks. One day later, Russian forces carried out a missile strike on a military educational facility in the central city of Poltava, killing over 55 people. On September 4, the western city of Lviv, long considered to be largely safe from Russian attacks, was hit by a missile strike targeting civilian infrastructure, killing seven people.