Ukrainian authorities say Russia is deploying “new tactics” as the city of Kharkiv comes under rolling aerial assaults from ballistic missiles and drones fitted with jet engines.
Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, was facing wave after wave of Russian air strikes on Thursday night and Friday morning, Ukrainian officials said, as Russia’s full-scale assault on its neighbor continued into its 1,500th day.
According to local authorities in Kharkiv, which lies just 40 kilometers (about 25 miles) from the Russian border in northeastern Ukraine, four rocket attacks took place overnight and at least 20 drones struck the city, damaging houses and offices and injuring five people, including an eight-year-old girl.
The rockets were reportedly followed by repeated drone attacks, with Moscow deploying Iranian-built Shahed drones fitted with jet engines, which can cover the short distance from Russia to Kharkiv so quickly that they are difficult to shoot down.
In the capital Kyiv and its surrounding areas, “massive” daytime Russian missile and drones strikes on Friday had killed at least one person, the head of the local military administration, Mykola Kalashnyk, said.
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said Russia had fired nearly 500 cruise missiles and drones during the latest barrage.
“Russian terrorists reject diplomacy and peace efforts. They must get strong responses that they deserve,” he said on X.
On Thursday, Russian strikes across Ukraine killed at least two people and wounded dozens of others, Ukrainian authorities said.
The attacks come as peace talks brokered by the US have stalled in recent weeks.
Ukraine: Russia using ‘new tactics’
“We see that the enemy is using new routes, increasingly modernized drones and new tactics,” said Ukrainian Air Force spokesman Ihnat on state television, reporting over 400 drone strikes and ten ballistic missile attacks across the country as a whole in the last 24 hours.
It’s the second time this week Russia has followed up an overnight drone barrage with heavy daytime attacks — seemingly a new tactic as Moscow probes ways to penetrate Ukraine’s air defenses.
“The enemy is exerting [pressure] on our population, paralyzing the work of certain public institutions, as well as learning institutions,” Ihnat said.
Such is the scale of the ongoing attacks that Poland also scrambled fighter jets, the Polish armed forces confirmed on Friday morning.
“Due to the activity of the Russian Federation’s long-range aviation, which is carrying out strikes on the territory of Ukraine, military aviation operations have commenced in our airspace,” the Polish army wrote on social media. “Duty jets have been scrambled, and ground-based air defense systems as well as radar reconnaissance have reached a state of maximum readiness.
Russia: Ukrainian drones intercepted
Meanwhile, the Russian Defense Ministry claimed to have intercepted 192 Ukrainian drones overnight, which, based on their flight paths, were possibly targeting oil export facilities near the northern port city of St. Petersburg.
In Moscow, one-time Russian president and outspoken firebrand Dmitry Medvedev said Russia should drop “tolerant attitude” towards Ukraine’s possible future membership of the European Union.
“The EU is no longer just an economic union; it can transform, and rather quickly, into a full-blown military alliance, overtly hostile to Russia, and in some ways worse than,” claimed Medvedev who, when he’s not posting on social media, serves as deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council.
“It’s time to the tolerant attitude toward our neighbors joining what is now a military economic European Union,” he said.
Medvedev added that, while he did not believe the United States would leave the NATO military alliance as President Donald Trump has threatened, Washington could make symbolic moves such as cutting the number of US troops deployed in other NATO countries.
He posited that the “obvious divisions” within NATO could push the EU towards becoming more than simply an economic union.
Edited by: Karl Sexton
DW News
