The new terror stalking Kyiv day and night

Kyiv: The shocking new weapons in the war on Ukraine are deepening fears over civilian deaths when major cities seem defenceless against the speed and scale of the latest Russian attacks.

Drones fitted with jet engines are radically changing the war, slamming into targets at speeds of about 600km/h and outrunning the interceptors designed to stop them.

The result is a new terror for Kyiv and other cities, according to the Ukrainian officers who defend the nation against relentless missile and drone attacks .

“Kyiv is being terrorised day and night with the jet-powered drones from Russia,” said Colonel Skurativskyi, chief of the air defence directorate of Ukraine’s 7th Rapid Response Corps.

Russia unleashed the new drones in massive numbers over the past month, setting off air raid alerts throughout the day and changing the tempo of a war once dominated by overnight missile strikes.

Daily life continued on the streets of Kyiv in recent days, as many residents chose to stay out at a bar or cafe while checking their social media channels to gauge the scale of the danger, particularly if the attack was likely to be a ballistic missile rather than a drone.

The alert on Friday night, for instance, did not stop young people gathering in a park for drinks. The alert on Saturday morning did not deter an old man from walking his dog in the light rain on the streets near the city’s historic Saint Sophia cathedral.

But the danger was real, and deadly, in other parts of the city and country. On Friday, Russian drones hit two petrol stations in Kyiv , killing two people and wounding six. A drone strike on an apartment building in Zaporizhzhia injured two civilians, including a young boy. An attack in Dnipro wounded a dozen people.

On Saturday, a Russian strike ​on a grocery store in the town of Zvyahel, west of Kyiv, killed two people. In the southern city of Odesa, the local governor said 37 were injured in overnight strikes .

Earlier drones, including the Shahed models designed in Iran and shared with Russia, came with propeller engines, enabling them to reach speeds of about 180km/h.

Ukraine developed drones to counter these threats, although the country remains desperately short of the Patriot interceptors it needs to stop Russian missiles.

Now the jet-powered drones are finding a way through Ukraine’s air defence – and forcing a debate over how quickly the armed forces can develop faster interceptors to destroy the flying bombs before they kill.

Russia is intensifying the danger on a rapid scale, with the Ukrainian armed forces telling the BBC that jet-powered drone attacks rose from 350 in June to 1600 in July and 2800 in August.

Skurativskyi expressed confidence on Saturday that Ukraine would find a way to counter the danger. Speaking to the Yalta European Strategy (YES) conference in Kyiv, he said the danger was not restricted to Ukraine alone.