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Russia continued to send waves of drones towards the Ukrainian capital Kyiv on Friday, repeatedly forcing residents into shelters and disrupting life across the city for a second consecutive day.
The attacks followed an extraordinary day of disruption on Thursday, when Kyiv spent almost 15 hours under air-raid warnings, with sirens sounding 13 separate times, according to the Foreign Ministry.
“Again and again throughout the day, sirens sounded as Russia launched drones in small groups towards the Ukrainian capital. Each new threat put people at risk and forced them to seek safety,” the ministry said.
The continuing attacks mean Kyiv has already faced at least 23 separate air-raid alerts in less than two days, disrupting work, transport and everyday life.
Ukrzaliznytsia, the state railway operator, said prolonged air-raid alerts caused significant delays, with the disruption expected to continue for at least another day.
No long-distance trains have been cancelled, but some services were running several hours behind schedule as repeated aerial threats interrupted operations.
Russia turns to jet-powered drones
Ukrainian officials say much of the prolonged disruption is being caused by Russia launching small groups of jet-powered drones.
Rather than concentrating them in a single mass barrage, the drones are being sent in successive waves, repeatedly renewing the threat and triggering new air-raid alerts.
“The goal is to exhaust air defences and the population,” Andrii Kovalenko, head of Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation, said on Friday.
Russia has been stepping up its use of jet-powered drones in recent months. Unlike the propeller-driven Shahed-type drones that have become a regular feature of Russian attacks, some of the newer weapons can reach speeds of up to 500 km/h.
That puts them beyond the reach of many Ukrainian interceptor drones, which typically fly at speeds of up to 300 km/h, potentially forcing Ukraine to use scarce and considerably more expensive air-defence missiles against them.
Between 7am and 7pm on Thursday, Russia launched around 140 attack drones against Ukraine, more than 100 of them jet-powered, according to Ukraine’s Air Force.
The majority were directed against Kyiv.
Warehouses and homes hit
The sustained attacks have caused extensive damage to civilian infrastructure in Kyiv and the surrounding region.
One person was killed and two others injured in the Kyiv region on Friday, while 14 warehouses, 16 private homes, three apartment buildings and 16 vehicles were damaged, according to regional authorities.
Warehouses and distribution centres have been particularly heavily hit in recent Russian attacks.
Around 90% of Ukraine’s modern storage facilities for goods have been destroyed by Russian strikes, Agriculture Minister Taras Vysotskyi said on Friday.
The destruction will not leave Ukrainians without food, he said, but is forcing retailers to reorganise their supply chains, including by delivering goods directly from producers to shops.
Moscow claims it is hitting military targets
Despite the documented damage to homes, schools, warehouses and businesses, the Kremlin reiterated its usual narrative on Friday, saying that Russia was attacking military and military-related infrastructure.
“Strikes on Kyiv are continuing. They are continuing systematically and deliberately,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
“We continue to destroy the military and paramilitary infrastructure. Our military knows what it is doing and how it is doing it.”