By Dan Peleschuk and Anna Pruchnicka
KYIV, Sept 2 (Reuters) – Russian drones tore into central Kyiv on Wednesday morning, wounding 11 people and damaging residential and university buildings on the seventh day of nearly round-the-clock attacks that have upended daily life in Ukraine’s capital.
Moscow’s new air campaign against Kyiv and the surrounding region has killed dozens of civilians and disrupted logistics as the city struggles to shoot down the jet-powered drones that have swarmed the area in waves.
Wednesday’s attack on a downtown university took place while students were in class, forcing some 160 to seek shelter, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said.
“Unfortunately, there has been far too little response from the world and its most influential leaders to this latest Russian escalation of strikes,” Zelenskiy wrote on X.
The mounting attacks come with Ukraine already bracing for a new season of Russian strikes on energy infrastructure, amid a critical shortage of U.S.-designed missile interceptors needed to down Moscow’s ballistic missiles.
Earlier on Wednesday, Russia struck power facilities in the southern Odesa region with missiles and drones, authorities said, knocking out power to more than 350,000 homes.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said late on Tuesday he had ordered his forces to prepare a new campaign of “massive” strikes.
Two people were also killed and eight wounded in strikes on the southeastern city of Dnipro, the regional governor said, where food warehouses and educational buildings were damaged.
TRANSPORT SNARLED, PARLIAMENT PUSHED UNDERGROUND
Loud explosions thundered through central Kyiv on Wednesday morning as air defences targeted incoming drones. The hiss of their jet engines could be heard streaking across the sky.
While launched in small numbers, they have sparked frequent air raid alerts that have snarled public transport in the city of several million and forced lawmakers underground.
Parts of Kyiv’s Soviet-era metro system have been suspended during alerts, leaving residents mired in heavy traffic.
Many of those interviewed by Reuters expressed fatigue mixed with resignation.
“What scares me is that I’m fatalistic about them (the alerts) – that there’s no sense of threat, or a desire to hide somewhere,” said 26-year-old resident Yulia, a marketing specialist, adding she felt only “total powerlessness”.
Alerts interrupted parliament twice on Wednesday, prompting lawmakers to test a new digital voting system from underneath the legislature, according to opposition deputy Yaroslav Zhelezniak, who posted footage of the platform.
Later on Wednesday, Zelenskiy said Ukraine’s alerting system would be revised into two tiers — for missiles and drones — allowing for more “predictability and a better understanding of how to react”.
He added that curfew hours would be reduced and more above-ground transport options offered to compensate for metro closures.
UKRAINE SEEKS TO BLOCK RUSSIAN AIRSPACE
Kyiv and Moscow have traded escalating blows against logistics and economic infrastructure in recent weeks, aiming to dent each other’s war effort in the fifth year of fighting.
On Wednesday Kyiv said it had asked the International Civil Aviation Organization to dissuade its member states from using Russian airspace, in order to clear the way for more Ukrainian attacks.
The request followed a warning to airlines and insurance companies by Zelenskiy late on Tuesday that the presence of Ukrainian drones had made Russian skies dangerous to use.
Last week, the Ukrainian leader said he had ordered his military to scale up its long-range drone strikes on Russia to 1,000 per day, from around 300 currently.
(Additional reporting by Yuliia Dysa and Vladyslav Smilianets in Kyiv and Anna Pruchnicka in Gdansk; Writing by Dan Peleschuk; Editing by Christian Schmollinger, Alison Williams and Gareth Jones)
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