JAKARTA - Russia launched its biggest drone strike on Ukraine on Monday, ahead of Germany's Nazi defeat holiday, Victory Day in World War II on Tuesday.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said Russia had fired 60 Iranian-made kamikaze drones at Ukraine's targets, including 36 aircraft in the capital, all of which were shot down. The rubble hit apartments and other buildings, wounding at least five people in the capital.
Meanwhile, in the city of Odesa in the Black Sea, a food warehouse caught fire due to a missile attack, where officials reported three people were injured.
This is the largest drone strike in the Russian air campaign launched 10 days ago, after a break since early March.
In Kyiv, explosions were heard throughout the night. Three people were injured in an explosion in the Solomyanskyi District and two people were injured when the wreckage of a drone crashed in the Sviatoshyn district, both of which were in the west of the capital's center, said Mayor Vitali Klitschko.
The Kyiv military government said the drone debris fell to the runway at Zhuliany airport, one of two passenger airports in the capital, pulling emergency services there, although there were no fires. The drone debris also damaged a two-story building in the central district of Shevchenkivskyi.
After warnings of airstrikes sounded for hours in about two-thirds of Ukraine's territory, local media said explosions were heard in the southern region of Kherson and southeast of Zaporizhia.
Kyiv said Moscow was also making its last attempt to try to seize the destroyed city of Bakhmut in the eastern part, to reward President Vladimir Putin who would be the only reward for Russia's expensive winter attack, right on Victory Day.
Moscow itself is preparing for Tuesday's Victory Day parade, the most important day in the Russian calendar under President Putin, who used the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in 1945 to justify its invasion of Ukraine.
Unlike Russia, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky commemorated Victory Day on Monday and instead of Tuesday, announcing that he had signed atine to change the holiday date according to Western allies' habits.
"Given the heroism of millions of Ukrainians in the fight against Nazism, we see the same heroism in the actions of our army today," said President Zelensky, who addressed the Ukrainian people from the top of the hill overlooking Kyiv.
"Unfortunately, crime has returned. Just like the crimes that invaded our cities and villages before, so is it now. Like that crime killed our people before, so is it now," he continued.
"And all the old crimes brought back by modern Russia will be defeated, just like Nazism was defeated," President Zelensky said.
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Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Maria Zakharova said, changing that date, President Zelensky had betrayed the memory of the Ukrainians who fought the Nazis.
"What's worse than an enemy? A traitor. That's Zelensky, the embodiment of Christ in the 21st century," he said.
Ukraine, as part of the Soviet Union at the time, suffered higher per capita casualties than Russia in the Second World War, was one of the centers of European Jews culled in the Holocaust.
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