Ukraine attacked by over 130 Russian drones in latest strike, Kyiv says

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By Anastasiia Malenko

KYIV (Reuters) -Russia launched one of its largest drone salvos at Ukraine in recent months, targeting Kyiv and other cities and igniting a fire at an industrial facility in the western region of Ternopil, officials said on Wednesday.

Air defences shot down 68 of 136 drones used in the attack, the air force said in its readout. Two drones got back to Russia and 64 were unaccounted for, possibly after being intercepted by electronic warfare systems, it added.

Two drones hit unidentified targets, according to the report on the attack, which took place hours before President Volodymyr Zelenskiy unveiled his plan to fend off Russia’s invasion.

Almost 50 firefighters put out a “large-scale fire” in the Ternopil region, the military administration wrote on the Telegram messaging app.

“There were no injuries,” it said, declining to name the affected facility.

The air force said Russia also fired two missiles at the northern Chernihiv and eastern Donetsk regions, but did not say what happened to them. There was no immediate comment from Russia on its latest strike.

Police in neighbouring Moldova said that debris of what appeared to be a missile had been found to the country’s north, about 4 km (2.5 miles) from its border with Ukraine’s central Vinnytsia region. It was not immediately clear if it related to the latest or a previous attack.

The drone attack caused a fire at a private residence in the region outside the capital and damaged several other buildings, according to governor Ruslan Kravchenko.

The region was under air alert for more than 12 hours because of the attack. Kravchenko said there were no casualties.

All the drones that targeted Kyiv overnight were destroyed and there were no reports of damage or injuries, Serhiy Popko, the city military administration’s chief, said.

Russian strikes have pounded Ukraine’s power facilities this year and long blackouts and other outages are almost certain to make the looming winter difficult for ordinary Ukrainians far from the front line where Russian troops have been advancing.

The governors of the southern Kherson and Mykolaiv regions reported power cuts on Wednesday, with the energy authorities in Mykolaiv region saying 272,000 consumers had been affected.

Regional governor Vitaliy Kim said the sweeping outage was not the result of the overnight strike and that the authorities were working to restore power in the next couple of hours.

(Reporting by Gleb Garanich, Sergiy Karazy and Anastasiia Malenko in Kyiv, additional reporting Alexander Tanas in Chisinau; Writing by Lidia Kelly and Tom Balmforth; Editing by Lincoln Feast and Philippa Fletcher)