In the early hours of 8 May, Russian troops attacked the Kyiv and Odesa regions using Iranian-made kamikaze drones Shahed-136/131, as per a statement by the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ Air Force. All the 35 drones used to attack Kyiv were shot down by air defence.
According to the Ukrainian military, Russian forces attacked Kyiv from the north — the Seshcha airfield located in the Bryansk region of Russia.
Furthermore, according to the Ukrainian Air Force, Russian troops attacked the Odesa region using Tu-22M3 long-range bombers: in total, there were eight launches from the area of the Tarkhankut cape in Crimea, and “some of the missiles did not reach their targets”.
It was reported earlier that air defence was activated in the Kyiv region in the night. According to Kyiv’s Mayor Vitali Klitschko, drone debris fell on two two-storey buildings in different districts of the city. A high-pressure gas pipeline was damaged. Furthermore, some of the debris fell on the runway in the Kyiv International Airport.
The Kyiv administration says that drone debris damaged a 10-tonne fuel tank, there is a leak but no fire, emergency crews are on the way to the location.
According to head of the Kyiv administration Serhiy Popko, five Kyiv residents were hurt in the attack. Moreover, cars, windows, and facades were damaged.
Speaker for the Odesa regional military administration Serhiy Bratchuk says that in the early hours of 8 May Russian forces carried out an attack using Kh-22 missiles launched from strategic aviation planes against a depot of one of the food enterprises and against a recreational zone on the Black Sea coast. There have been no reports of casualties.
In the night, air raid warnings were declared in the cities of Kyiv and Odesa as well as in the Kyiv, Odesa, Vinnytsia, Kropyvnytskyi, Poltava, Mykolaiv, and Dnipro regions, and also in the Ukraine-controlled parts of the Kherson region.
Lately, Ukraine has been getting shelled more often. On 4 May, Russian forces attacked Ukraine using Iranian-made drones Shahed-136/131, Kyiv’s authorities said that the city had faced the highest number of attacks since the start of the year.