Russia launched an overnight drone attack between Saturday and Sunday on Kyiv after a nearly two-week pause, with Ukrainian military officials confirming that its countermeasures to neutralize the weapons were largely successful.
“Another enemy air attack on Kyiv,” Sergiy Popko, the leader of the Kyiv city military administration, said on social media of the hour-long raid, according to CNN. “All enemy targets in the airspace around Kyiv were detected and destroyed.”
Iranian-made Shahed barrage munitions were deployed in the assault. The weapons did not hit the city as planned. However, falling debris in two districts if Kyiv damaged three homes, according to Ruslan Kravchenko, head of the Kyiv regional state administration, CNN reported. Ukrainian air defense forces shot down the weapons, Kyiv’s city military administration said on Telegram, the Hill reported.
In May, Russia conducted air strikes on Ukraine almost every day, including with an overnight attack on Kyiv on May 31. Throughout the month, the strikes damaged many buildings and inflicted some civilian casualties, mainly injuries.
As Russia continues to wage war on its neighbor with shelling, strikes, and other tactics, nearly two years into the conflict, Ukraine is rolling out a counteroffensive.
On Saturday, General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that Ukraine’s military response has been somewhat delayed but clarified that its forces are “advancing steadily, deliberately working its way through very difficult minefields… 500m a day, 1,000m a day, 2,000m a day, that kind of thing.”
Milley predicted that the counteroffensive will be protracted and brutal, according to the BBC. The human cost will likely be very high, he told an audience at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. on Friday.
“Real people are on those front lines and real people are in those vehicles. Real bodies are being shredded by high explosives,” he said. “What I had said was this is going to take six, eight, 10 weeks, it’s going to be very difficult. It’s going to be very long, and it’s going to be very, very bloody. And no-one should have any illusions about any of that.”