Kyiv under terror of the ‘kamikaze’ drones that wait then kill

Kyiv woke yesterday to attack from swarms of Iranian-made “kamikaze” drones, a week to the hour after cruise missile strikes rained down on Ukraine’s cities, bringing the war thundering back from the front line to the peaceful populace.

Russia launched 28 drones at the capital, the first attack on Kyiv to use the loitering munition, with five dodging air defences to slam into buildings and streets, exploding on impact.

The four people who died in a historic four-storey apartment building close to Kyiv’s central station included a couple expecting their first child at Christmas and an older man and woman. The building’s walls collapsed after it was struck by the last of the five drones just after 8.20am, almost two hours after air raid sirens announced the assault.

Air raid sirens sounded again last night. Explosions were reported in the town of Fastiv just outside Kyiv, as well as in the southern port of Odesa.

The lethal strikes prompted accusations of terrorism from President Zelensky and alarm from the West at Iran’s apparent role in the escalation.

 “It seems that the current enemy unites in its evil all previous enemies of our statehood,” Zelensky said. “It acts insidiously — kills civilians, hits housing, infrastructure.”

He vowed that “terror must lose and will lose, and Ukraine will prevail and will bring to justice every Russian terrorist — from commanders to privates who carried out criminal orders”.

The attacks came a week after President Putin unleashed cruise missile attacks against Ukrainian cities in revenge for the strike on the Kerch bridge linking Crimea to Russia.

Yet days later he claimed all the intended targets had been reached and there was “no more need for massive strikes”. At the same time, intelligence agencies concluded Russia was running short on expensive precision missiles, a fact that may have influenced its deployment of cheaper, lighter drones.

Air raid sirens sounded at 6.30am, sending thousands to basements and bomb shelters. Ukraine’s air force scrambled jets to chase and shoot down the drones while soldiers and police officers fired automatic weapons from the ground, bringing down at least one.

Recovered fragments of one drone had been scrawled with the message “For Belgorod”, the Russian town across the border repeatedly hit with unacknowledged strikes that Moscow blames on Ukraine’s military.

Ukraine’s prime minister, Denys Shmygal, said strikes across the country had hit critical infrastructure in three regions, knocking out electricity to hundreds of towns and villages across the country. In Sumy, a northern city, four people were killed in a fire ignited by a strike on an electrical substation, part of Russia’s campaign to target power supplies as winter nears.

On Kyiv’s Zhylianska Street, struck by a cruise missile a week ago, one drone hit a municipal heating station followed by another close by an hour later, an apparent “double-tap attack” aiming to kill rescuers responding to the first strike. Two firefighters were among those hospitalised.

Such vivid proof of Iran’s role as a supplier is an inflammatory element in the conflict. Washington has warned since April that Iran was providing Moscow with support and the Iranian drones have been used against military targets around Kharkiv since early September.

Their deployment against civilians and civilian infrastructure, however, raises the temperature. Britain and France have suggested that Iran’s supply of armed drones to the Russian war effort puts Tehran in breach of obligations under the 2015 nuclear deal that the US and Europe are trying to revive after President Trump exited it.

In Washington, the state department warned it would not hesitate to impose secondary sanctions on anyone doing business with Iranian industry involved in arms provision to Russia and it concurred with Britain and France that Iran supplying drones to Russia would violate a UN security council resolution.

Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine’s foreign minister, called on the EU to impose fresh sanctions on Iran for providing Russia with the drones. Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Zelensky, accused Iran of the murder of innocent Ukrainians, saying Tehran had moved from oppressing its own people to giving “Russian monsters weapons for mass murders in the heart of Europe”. He added: “That is what unfinished business and concessions to totalitarianism mean . . . sanctions are not enough.”

Iran denies supplying the drones despite intelligence reports that it has shipped hundreds since April. “We have not provided weaponry to any side of the countries at war,” its foreign ministry insisted yesterday, dismissing the claim as western propaganda. Yet the drone attacks follow reports that Iran agreed to send Russia not only further drone supplies but also ballistic missiles to offset Moscow’s vast losses.

In Israel, a senior minister suggested that a missile transfer would compel the country to get off its diplomatic tightrope and send military aid to Ukraine. “There is no longer any doubt where Israel should stand in this bloody conflict,” Nachman Shai, the minister for diaspora affairs, said. “The time has come for Ukraine to receive military aid as well, just as the USA and Nato countries provide.”

That prompted a warning from Dmitry Medvedev, Putin’s hawkish ally, saying that any attempt by Israel to supply Ukraine with weapons would be “a very reckless move” that would “destroy all relations between our countries”.