Russia launches 280 drones and missiles on Ukraine
As Russia intensifies its attacks, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Kyiv is developing interceptor drones with the help of its international allies.
According to Ukraine's Armed Forces, Moscow launched 280 drones and missiles towards Ukraine overnight, 260 of which were downed or neutralised. They added that the city of Kremenchuk in the Poltava region was the main target of the aerial attack.
The acting head of the Poltava regional military administration, Volodymyr Kohut, reported that direct hits and falling debris struck energy infrastructure, damaging both private homes and apartment buildings, with windows shattered, frames destroyed and several cars damaged.
Kohut said one person was moderately injured in the attack. Rescue teams are currently working to deal with the aftermath of the shelling.
He added that the region faced a massive, coordinated attack, but air defence forces were able to destroy most of the incoming munitions.
Witness and victim of the attack Iryna Nosova said, "Last night we had a nightmare, we have never seen anything like it. It feels like we are being killed and that's it. It's some kind of killing of our Ukrainian people, I don't know what to call it."
She added, "I think it's not even terrorists, it's murderers doing this. It's night, there are children. Our windows have been smashed, so much glass is lying on the street. It's unbelievable, it feels very awful."
In Kherson, one woman was wounded during the shelling, as the city's central district sustained damage to apartment buildings.
Local officials reported shattered windows and damage to balconies, roofs, and facades following the attack.
The attack comes amid continued intense fighting between Ukrainian and Russian forces. On Friday, both sides claimed to have struck key military targets in each other's territory.
The Russian Defence Ministry stated that it intercepted and shot down Ukrainian aerial bombs, rockets, and over 1,000 drones.
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The Geran-1 and Geran-2 drones are very much redesigned, because the Iranian version was not as effective as many expected," he notes. In an interview with Kommersant, Ruslan Pukhov, director of the Centre for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, describes the Shaheds' flight characteristics as "primitive" and "allowing them to be shot down en masse even with 7.62 mm anti-aircraft machine guns." He also writes of the "moped" engine sound, "alerting the entire neighbourhood to the drone's arrival." 'In Israel, Russia's role as a mediator is looked upon with no apparent antipathy' As Hannah Notte, a political scientist and expert at the James Martin Centre for Nonproliferation Studies, writes, Russia has always had limitations on how far it can go in supporting Iran. "The Kremlin's obsessive anti-Western agenda has raised the Islamic republic's profile as a partner, but Putin has other interests in the region - such as a long-standing, albeit complicated, relationship with Israel and the need to coordinate oil prices with OPEC - so he has been mindful of Israel's and the Gulf states' red lines when it comes to defence cooperation with Tehran," Notte wrote in a column for US outlet The Atlantic. Nikita Smagin believes that in the current conflict between Iran and Israel, Russia is no longer an "indispensable" mediator. "When the nuclear negotiations were going on, when Trump was trying to sign a nuclear deal with Iran, here Russia could act as an indispensable mediator," he says. "It was actually the only party that had the technical capability and was ready to export surplus uranium from Iran, pre-weapons grade or enriched beyond the required minimum per cent. Now, apparently, this issue is off the agenda". At the same time, despite the fact that relations between Israel and Russia, which became the first country in the world to receive a Hamas delegation after the 7 October attacks officially, have deteriorated, according to Smagin, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem look at Russia's role as a mediator "without any obvious antipathy". As Smagin notes, even after Moscow's invasion of 2022 and the subsequent wave of immigration in an attempt to avoid mobilisation, "a large number of agents of anti-Russian influence have appeared in the Jewish state, people who moved from Russia and have a very negative attitude to the Russian authorities and are obviously the backbone of anti-Russian sentiments in Israel."
