Zelensky: Russian attack on Kyiv a 'voluntary terror'
Ukraine's capital Kyiv was hit by what officials said was the largest Russian drone attack of the war on Saturday, wounding five people as the sound of air defences and explosions woke residents early in the morning.
The drones struck different neighbourhoods of Kyiv in the early hours of Saturday, with other waves coming with the sunrise. The air raid warning lasted a total of six hours, according to Reuters.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said that more than 70 Iranian-designed Shahed kamikaze drones were launched at Ukraine and that most, but not all, were shot down.
The air force later announced that they had shot down 71 Shahed drones and one missile. Mayor Vitali Klitschko said the attack wounded five people, including an 11-year-old girl, and damaged buildings in neighbourhoods across the city.
Fragments from a downed drone caused a fire in a children's kindergarten, he said.
Volodymyr Zelensky pointed out that the attack took place in the early morning, when Ukrainians were commemorating the country's greatest national tragedy - the Holodomor of 1932-1933, in which millions of people died of starvation. "Voluntary terror... The Russian leadership is proud of the fact that it can kill," he wrote on Telegram.
Ukraine's leadership has previously drawn parallels between the Holodomor and Russia's current invasion.
Ukraine and more than 30 other countries recognize the Holodomor as a genocide of the Ukrainian people by the Soviet Union, which was ruling Ukraine at the time and which was trying to crush its desire for independence.
Moscow denies that the deaths were caused by a deliberate genocide policy and claims that Russians and other ethnic groups also suffered from the famine.
Translation by Iurie Tataru
