Odesa Hit by Jet Drones: 21-Story Building Struck

Russia fired 163 drones at Ukraine overnight between September 2 and 3, roughly half of them the jet-powered version, faster and harder to intercept than the classic Shahed. After a string of strikes aimed at Kyiv, the weight of the attack shifted south and west this time: Odesa took the worst of it, where a 21-story residential building was damaged and residents in five regions were left without power. For Belgrade, the direction of Russian strikes matters beyond Ukraine itself, since Brussels factors every such wave into its assessment of compliance with the sanctions regime against Moscow, one that Serbia has not joined.

Ukraine’s air force said that by 8:30 a.m. it had shot down or neutralized 135 of the drones launched, including jet drones, Gerbera-type drones and other types. According to the statement, the aircraft took off from Millerovo and Oryol in Russia, from occupied Donetsk, and from Gvardeiske airfield in occupied Crimea. The attack was repelled by aviation, air defense missile units, electronic warfare, drone units and mobile fire teams of Ukraine’s Defense Forces.

In Odesa, the upper floors of the 21-story building were hit, and 17 people were injured, three of them children. Ukrenergo, the state transmission system operator, said the consequences of the attack were also felt by consumers outside the city itself.

“On the morning of September 3, Russian strikes left new consumers without power in five regions,” Ukrenergo said in its statement.

The damage extended well beyond Odesa. In Kyiv region, one person was hospitalized with shrapnel wounds, and a warehouse along with administrative buildings were damaged. In Khmelnytskyi region, a car’s driver was injured, and fires broke out at two enterprises. Ternopil region escaped without casualties, with one grass fire reported. Air defense shot down 10 drones over Dnipropetrovsk region, where a fire broke out in Pavlohrad, and in Kharkiv region a hospital building was damaged in Zolochiv, with one person injured.

Casualty figures vary from source to source, depending on whether they cover only the overnight wave on Odesa or the damage across the whole country over the preceding 24 hours. Ukrinform, citing local authorities, reports one person killed and one wounded in Zaporizhzhia region, eight civilians injured in Sumy region, 13 in Kyiv, six in Kherson, 11 private homes damaged in Vorzel, seven in Mykolaiv, and food warehouses damaged in Dnipro. The Kyiv Independent, in its daily roundup, puts the nationwide toll at five dead and 67 injured, noting that President Volodymyr Zelensky reported damage in 13 regions. UNN, meanwhile, cites 17 injured in the overnight wave on Odesa alone. The gap comes from each outlet counting a different time window and a different stretch of territory, not from the figures actually contradicting one another.

The attack continues a pattern that has been running for weeks. Just three days earlier, Kyiv had gone through five straight days under drone fire, with roughly 800 jet drones launched over four days, as we reported. Now the same pattern is repeating in the south and west of the country: jet drones, which fly faster than the classic Shahed and are harder to shoot down, have become a fixture of Russian tactics rather than the exception of a single night.

On September 3, Ukraine’s General Staff also released its estimate of Russian losses since the start of the war: 1,492,350 soldiers killed, wounded or missing since February 24, 2022, including 1,320 in the preceding 24 hours. The Ukrainian side does not back these figures with independent verification, and they typically diverge from Russian and Western estimates.

According to Ukraine’s air force, the attack was still under way through the morning, with drones continuing to linger in the country’s airspace.