Russian drone hits a school in Kyiv, pupils escape unharmed

A Russian drone struck a school in Kyiv on Monday morning, causing a fire, but all the pupils were in a shelter at the time and no injuries were reported, authorities in the Ukrainian capital said.

At the school, rescue teams were searching through the rubble near the burned building, whose windows had been shattered. Security camera footage, verified by Reuters, showed a large fire breaking out immediately after the drone hit the third floor of the building.

“They (the Russians) show mercy to no one,” said the school’s principal, Valentina Horna, adding that more than 100 pupils were in the school at the time of the attack. “Children are our future, the future of our nation. To destroy a nation, of course, they must destroy the children.”

A major bridge over the Dnieper River was also hit as part of Russia’s escalating attacks on the city, said Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko. The Southern Bridge was not seriously damaged, but metro traffic over it was temporarily suspended.

The attacks were part of an ongoing wave of air strikes on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities, in which Russia has used jet-engine drones that Ukraine has struggled to shoot down due to a lack of air defence systems.

On Wednesday, Russian forces launched what Ukrainian officials described as the start of a campaign of attacks on Ukraine’s power grid ahead of winter.

The attack on the bridge, in particular, constitutes an escalation, as such structures until recently were considered a “red line”, political analyst Vadim Denisenko wrote on Facebook.

The Institute for Nuclear Research in Kyiv said in a statement that it was attacked by a drone late on Wednesday evening, but radiation levels remained normal.

On Monday, a Russian drone was shot down at the National Academy of Sciences in central Kyiv, killing one person and injuring several others.

First responders and all necessary emergency services are working at the site in Kyiv, where a Russian “shahed” struck an ordinary school. Fortunately, the children and teachers were in the shelter during the air raid alert, so no one was injured. A fire broke out on the school’s… pic.twitter.com/OiiOWkULa9

The attack on Odesa

Russia has stepped up its air attacks, while its overall advance on the front has slowed this year.

One person was injured on Sunday in a Russian attack on a shopping centre in the Black Sea coastal city of Odesa, local officials said.

The head of the city administration, Serhiy Lysak, said there was damage to infrastructure, but gave no further details.

Odesa and the surrounding region are a frequent target of attacks aimed, in part, at undermining Kyiv’s export revenues.

Russia, which says it strikes only military targets, said it had hit a data centre in Odesa and a cargo ship in the nearby port of Chornomorsk.

Ukraine has also stepped up its attacks on Russia, striking oil refineries and major e-commerce companies in an effort to undermine Moscow’s war effort. A man was killed when a Ukrainian drone exploded in the town of Graivoron, in Russia’s Belgorod region, local authorities announced today.