Overnight barrage of Russian drones kills at least one person in Ukraine

Russia launched a barrage of drones against Ukraine overnight into Wednesday, killing at least one person in the region of Odesa.

Ukraine’s Air Force said Russian forces launched 181 drones from the Russian cities of Oryol, Kursk, Bryansk, Millerovo and Primorsk-Akhtarsk, as well as from Cape Chauda in the Russian-occupied Crimea.

It added that 115 drones were shot down by Ukraine’s air defences over Kharkiv, Sumy, Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk, Mykolaiv, Poltava, Kyiv, Chernihiv, Odesa and Cherkasy.

Odesa’s regional governor Oleh Kiper said critical energy infrastructure was targeted in the attack, leaving part of Odesa city without electricity, water and heat.

A 73-year-old man was killed in the city’s outskirts, and another resident sustained moderate injuries.

This was the fourth attack on Odesa’s power grid in two weeks, and a facility of DTEK, Ukraine’s largest private energy company was also hit, the company announced.

At least 20 houses in the city’s suburbs as well as public facilities including a business center, a post office and a medical laboratory, were damaged or destroyed.

In Pavlohrad in the Dnipropetrovsk region, rockets hit and damaged two industrial enterprises and smashed windows in two high-rise buildings. No one was killed or injured.