Ukrainian air defences downed 32 of 35 Shahed exploding drones launched by Russia early on Tuesday, most of them around Kyiv, officials said, in a bombardment that exposed gaps in the country’s air protection.
Russian forces mostly targeted the region around the Ukrainian capital in a night-time attack lasting around three hours, officials said, but Ukrainian air defences in the area shot down about two dozen of them.
The attack was part of a wider bombardment of Ukrainian regions which extended as far as the Lviv region in the west of the country, near Poland.
The Shahed drones made it all the way to Lviv because of the inability of air defence assets to cover such a broad area, said Ukrainian air force spokesman Yuriy Ihnat.
Air defence systems are mostly dedicated to protecting major cities, key infrastructure facilities, including nuclear power plants, and the front line, he added.
“There is a general lack of air defence assets to cover a country like Ukraine with a dome like Israel has,” he said, in a reference to Israel’s Iron Dome aerial defence system.
In the Lviv region, the Russian strike hit a critical infrastructure facility, starting a fire, according to Lviv Governor Maksym Kozytskyi.
Russia also struck the southern Zaporizhzhia region of Ukraine with ballistic missiles.
Ukraine’s air defences have been reinforced with sophisticated weapons from its Western allies, allowing it a higher success rate recently against incoming drones and missiles.
Previously, winter bombardment by Russia damaged Ukraine’s power supply, though speedy repairs blunted that effort.
The latest aerial assaults behind Ukraine’s front line coincided with the early stages of a Ukrainian counter-offensive, as it aims to dislodge the Kremlin’s forces from territory occupied since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.
The counter-offensive has come up against heavily mined terrain and reinforced defensive fortifications, according to Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces.
Russia has also mustered a large number of reserves, he said in a post accompanying a video of him visiting frontline positions with other senior officers.
“Despite the fierce resistance of the occupiers, our soldiers are doing everything possible to liberate Ukrainian territory. The operation continues as planned,” his post said.
Heavy battles are also taking place in eastern Ukraine, around Bakhmut, Lyman, Avdiivka and Marinka, the Ukrainian armed forces said.
Russia shelled 15 cities and villages in the eastern Donetsk region, wounding five civilians, including three in Chasiv Yar near Bakhmut, according to Ukraine’s presidential office.
In other developments, Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, known by its acronym SVR, invited Ukrainian diplomats stationed abroad to go to Russia with their families to avoid returning to Ukraine.
It claimed many Ukrainian diplomats are unwilling to return home after their tours and want refugee status in the European Union and Asian countries where they worked.
Meanwhile, Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu alleged that Ukraine plans to use US-made Himars and UK-provided Storm Shadow missiles to attack Russian territory, including the illegally annexed Crimean Peninsula.
He warned that using those missiles on targets outside the current war zone would “trigger immediate strikes on the decision-making centres on the territory of Ukraine”, but did not elaborate.
