On the night of Saturday, May 4, 2024, Russian forces launched an attack on Ukraine using 13 Shahed strike drones and four S-300 anti-aircraft missiles in land-to-land mode. All of the launches were carried out from the Belgorod region of Russia.
Russian industry is currently on track towards producing 10,000 Shahed drones per year, enabling routine daily strikes to exhaust Ukraine’s air defenses.
According to Mykola Oleshchuk, Commander of the Air Forces, anti-aircraft missile units of the Air Forces and mobile fire groups destroyed all 13 drones in the Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk oblasts.
At the same time, in Kharkiv, two impacts were recorded due to missiles and falling drone debris, resulting in a large-scale fire. Four people, including a 14-year-old child, were injured. Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov reported that both impacts occurred on civilian infrastructure in the Osnovianskyi district of the city.
There were three fires at different addresses. The largest fire broke out in warehouses with a total area of about 3,000 square meters according to emergency service.
The attack began at midnight when Russian forces launched a group of UAVs from the Belgorod region, which moved southwest. Explosions were heard in Kharkiv during the attack. This latest attack comes amid the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, which has seen widespread destruction and loss of life since its start in February 2022.
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