Kiev woke up with a start, in the middle of the night between Friday and Saturday, targeted by a gigantic swarm of drones, in what was defined as “the most massive attack” by the Russians on the Ukrainian capital since the beginning of the invasion. The anti-aircraft claimed to have destroyed almost all of them, 74 out of 75, but moments of terror were relived in the city as had not happened for some time, with the population without electricity for several hours. The enemy’s raid, which caused 5 injuries, including an 11-year-old child, also came on a day full of shadows for Ukrainians, the anniversary of the Holodomor: the great famine of the Stalin era which caused the death of millions of people in the 1930s. “The enemy launched a record number of attack drones against Ukraine, in the main direction of Kiev,” announced the commander of the Ukrainian Air Force, General Mykola Oleshchuk. The skies of the city and surrounding areas were flown for six hours by Iranian-made Shaheds supplied to the Russian armed forces.
Some residents (and 17,000 people across the region) were left freezing due to power grid outages, and debris from downed drones caused fires and damaged buildings, including a nursery. The president of Latvia, Edgars Rinkevics, who was visiting Kiev, posted a photo of himself in a dark air raid shelter on social media. The Ukrainian government spoke of a “symbolic” attack, carried out on the day the country remembered the Holodomor. “For them it was about killing Ukrainians then and it is now,” said Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, following Kiev’s narrative that the famine was deliberately caused by the USSR’s agricultural policies.
The same condemnation came from Volodymyr Zelensky who participated in a ceremony with top military leaders. Swiss President Alain Berset, visiting Kiev, also paid tribute to the victims of the famine. And with Zelensky he followed the “Grain from Ukraine” summit, to strengthen exports to Africa after Moscow’s exit from the agreement last July. Ursula von der Leyen announced that the EU will make 50 million euros available to Kiev for the repair and modernization of the necessary port infrastructure.
Giorgia Meloni, in a video message to the meeting, also assured that Italy “will be at your side” and Ukraine “as long as necessary”. In Russia, meanwhile, the hard line against those who oppose the war in Ukraine is confirmed. The Ministry of Justice has placed former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov on the list of “foreign agents”, accusing him among other things of working to “discredit the foreign and domestic policy” of Moscow. Kasyanov was Vladimir Putin’s prime minister during his first years in power, from 2000 to 2004, but then became highly critical of the president. After the invasion of Ukraine began, he left the country.
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