Kyiv hit by Iran-made kamikaze drones

Kyiv, October 13

Russian forces used Iranian-made kamikaze drones to attack Ukraine’s capital and Odesa regions and slammed other areas with missiles, Ukrainian officials said on Thursday as Moscow punished the country for a fourth day after a truck bomb attack on a bridge to Russia-annexed Crimea.

A strike carried out near Makariv, a small city located 50 km (31 miles) west of Kyiv, destroyed critical infrastructure. Throughout the capital region, residents whose lives had resumed some normalcy when the war moved east months ago again awoke to air raid sirens.

Five-storey building attacked 

• In the southern city of Mykolaiv, overnight shelling destroyed a five-storey apartment building
• Mykolaiv regional governor Vitaliy Kim said an 11-year-old boy was pulled from the rubble after six hours 
• He said the building was hit by an S-300 missile, a type ordinarily used for targeting military aircraft 

‘Gas hub’ plan

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• Putin presents Turkish leader Erdogan with a new “gas hub” plan
• Moscow seeks a corridor via Turkey after damage to Baltic pipelines
• Erdogan seen as a key diplomatic player in Russia-Ukraine war

Russia intensified its bombardment of civilian areas in recent weeks as its military lost ground in multiple occupied regions of Ukraine that President Vladimir Putin illegally claimed as Russian territory.

Putin’s supporters urged him to escalate the campaign further after the Crimea bridge attack.

It wasn’t clear if the explosive-packed drones caused any casualties. Ukrainian officials said dozens of people died this week after the Russian military ramped up the scope of its attacks, including at least two killed on Thursday in a missile strike that destroyed an apartment building in southern Ukraine.

Ukrainian officials said on Thursday that Iranians in Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine were training Russians how to use the Shahed-136 systems, which can conduct air-to-surface attacks, electronic warfare and targeting.

Their deployment may indicate the Russian military is running out of its own drones.

Ukraine’s air force command said on Thursday its air defence shot down six Iranian drones from over the Odesa and Mykolaiv regions during the night.

Meanwhile, Putin proposed to his Turkish counterpart Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday that Moscow could export more gas via Turkey and turn it into a new supply “hub”, bidding to preserve Russia’s energy leverage over Europe.

At a meeting in Kazakhstan, Putin said Turkey offered the most reliable route to deliver gas to the European Union, and the proposed platform would allow prices to be set without politics. — Agencies