Kyiv: Drone Hits Pechersk Apartment Block, Boy, 14, Killed
A Russian attack with 295 drones hit Kyiv, Odesa and Zaporizhzhia overnight before September 25. A 14 year old boy died in Kyiv's Pechersk district, and at least seven people were injured.
The Russian military carried out one of its largest drone attacks on Ukraine in recent weeks overnight between September 24 and 25, and its gravest consequence was the death of a 14 year old boy in Kyiv. For Belgrade, which is pursuing its own path toward European Union membership while staying outside the sanctions regime against Moscow, every new escalation of the war has a direct effect on the region’s energy and security calculations, from the cost of energy to the number of people seeking shelter outside Ukraine after each major wave of strikes.
The attack began on Thursday at 6 p.m. and continued until the morning of September 25, according to a statement from the Ukrainian Air Force. Russia launched 295 attack drones, including 52 jet powered Shaheds, along with Gerbera and Banderol/Dan-T drones and Parodiya decoys. They were launched from Oryol, Kursk, Millerovo, Primorsko-Akhtarsk and Shatalovo in Russia, as well as from occupied Donetsk and Hvardiiske in Crimea. As of 7:30 a.m., Ukrainian air defense had shot down or jammed 267 of the drones. Strikes were recorded at 16 locations, and debris from downed drones fell in four more places.
The worst damage was in Kyiv’s Pechersk district, where a drone struck a 16 story apartment building around 8 a.m. The Kyiv City Military Administration said in a statement:
“Unfortunately, a 14 year old boy died in the enemy attack. We extend our condolences to his family and loved ones.”
Sources differ on exactly which floors of the building were hit. The news agency UNITED24 reported, citing Ukrainian police, that the strike hit the 10th and 11th floors, while Meduza reported that the section of the building between the seventh and tenth floors was hit. Early reports on the number of injured also varied. Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said in his first update on Telegram:
“So far, three people have been injured in the capital in the enemy attack of September 25. All of the injured have been hospitalized. One of them is in serious condition.”
Police and the city military administration later reported that at least seven people had been injured in the Pechersk district alone, adding that the final casualty count was still being determined.
The attack also hit other parts of the Ukrainian capital. Klitschko said that “in the Solomianskyi district, one of the drones hit a 25 story apartment building on the fourth floor,” while the State Emergency Service reported that a roof structure of a non residential building in the same district also caught fire. In the Podilskyi district, fire broke out on the first and second floors of a six story non residential building. Firefighters extinguished all the blazes.
The attack that night was not confined to Kyiv. One person was killed in Odesa, and another was injured and is in the hospital in moderate condition. Serhii Lysak, head of the regional military administration, said: “An enemy attack on the city. Private homes have been damaged.” According to a later report by Ukrinform, 17 private homes were damaged in the Kyiv district of Odesa region. In Zaporizhzhia, a drone damaged a hospital building and started a fire in one of its rooms, injuring two people.
The attack also struck energy infrastructure in six regions. Ukrenergo, the country’s transmission system operator, said in a statement:
“As a result of Russian strikes on energy infrastructure, new power outages were recorded this morning in the Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Kharkiv, Odesa and Mykolaiv regions. Emergency repairs and restoration work are already under way wherever security conditions currently allow.”
The company added that electricity consumption at 9:30 a.m. was 5.3 percent lower than the previous day, thanks to lighter cloud cover, which increases the output of solar power plants in some regions.
This was already the second major attack on Kyiv in the same week. We covered the previous one, in which two people were killed and the Shayba market burned, in an earlier report. The number of people injured in last night’s attack is still being updated, and Ukrainian authorities have not yet said when a final toll will be known.
