The Russia-Ukraine war broke out on February 24, 2022. Photo: AA

After a relative lull, Russia launched a drone attack early Sunday on Ukraine's capital, Kiev, officials said. It was the first such attack of the war in 12 days.

All of the Iranian-made Shahed exploding drones were detected and shot down, according to Serhii Popko, the head of the Kiev city administration.

In addition to the city itself, the surrounding Kiev region was targeted. Kiev regional Governor Ruslan Kravchenko reported that one person was wounded by falling debris from a destroyed drone.

Officials in the Ukrainian capital didn't provide an exact number of drones that attacked the city. But Ukraine's air force said that across the country, eight Shaheds and three Kalibr cruise missiles were launched by the Russians.

Further south, a 13-year-old boy was wounded in overnight shelling of Ukraine’s partially occupied southern Kherson province, said Oleksandr Tolokonnikov, spokesperson for the Ukrainian administration of the province.

The child was wounded when the Russian army shelled the village of Mylove on the banks of the Dnieper River in the Beryslav district, Tolokonnikov said.

“The child was hospitalised. There is no threat to his life,” Tolokonnikov added.

Kherson attacks

Shelling of the Kherson province continued on Sunday morning, wounding four people in the regional capital, also called Kherson.

The regional prosecutor’s office said that a residential area of the city was targeted by Russian troops operating in the Russia-occupied part of the Kherson province.

"At least four citizens were wounded, two of them due to a targeted strike on a high-rise building,” the office wrote on Telegram.

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s military reported that the most intense fighting continued in Ukraine’s industrial east, with attacks focused around Bakhmut, Marinka and Lyman in the country’s Donetsk province, where 46 combat clashes took place.

In its regular update on Sunday morning, the General Staff said that over the previous 24 hours, Russia had carried out 27 airstrikes, one missile strike and around 80 attacks from multiple rocket launchers, targeting regions in the north, northeast, east and south of the country.

Drone shot down

In Russia, local officials reported that air defence systems shot down a drone over the Belgorod region, which borders Ukraine, while the neighbouring Kursk region faced shelling attacks. No casualties or damage were reported.

Following the drama of Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin’s rebellion last week, Russian authorities remained defiant.

Vyacheslav Volodin, speaker of Russia’s lower house of parliament, the State Duma, said on Sunday that Russian President Vladimir Putin came out of this situation “having strengthened his position even more both in the country and in the world.”

Russian society, he said, “having passed this test, has shown its maturity.” According to Volodin, there was “not a single example of someone supporting the rebellion.”

AP