Russian drones batter Ukraine's Kyiv region for a second day

Russian forces have resumed drone attacks on Ukraine’s Kyiv region that hit numerous buildings and storage depots

KYIV, Ukraine -- Russian forces on Friday resumed their drone barrage of Ukraine’s Kyiv region, hitting more than a dozen apartment buildings and storage depots in a second straight day of aerial attacks, officials said.

Prolonged air raids in Kyiv on Thursday essentially locked down the Ukrainian capital for 15 hours, the Foreign Ministry said, choking the economy and severely disrupting civilian life more than 4½ years after Russia’s full-scale invasion of its neighbor. Even longer alerts are a daily reality in regions closer to the front line, the ministry said.

Russian drone and missile attacks are also taking aim at the power grid in what Ukrainian officials say is an annual campaign to “weaponize winter.” In Ukraine’s southern Kherson region on the Black Sea, where glide bombs a day earlier forced a combined heat and power plant to shut down, officials predicted a winter of extended outages and told people to move elsewhere if they could.

Russian strikes in the Kyiv region damaged 14 warehouses, 16 private houses, three apartment buildings and 16 vehicles, Tymur Tkachenko, head of the Kyiv regional military administration, said Friday.

A second drone hit one location after emergency crews were deployed, the State Emergency Service said, in what is termed by the military as a “double tap” that targets first responders.

The attacks killed one person and wounded two others, according to officials.

The Russian Defense Ministry said that its forces overnight struck a warehouse in the Kyiv region that stores Ukraine’s Flamingo cruise missiles and fuel for rocket boosters.

Ukrainian officials didn't immediately confirm the Russian claim, and The Associated Press couldn't verify it. Recent strikes have damaged numerous warehouses across Kyiv and the wider region, including facilities storing books, food and other consumer goods.

The attacks stretched into daylight hours, and Tkachenko urged residents to stay in safe locations and heed air raid alerts.

Russia is launching small numbers of fast-moving jet-powered drones in waves in an attempt to paralyze the capital, according to Andrii Kovalenko, head of Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation at the National Security and Defense Council.

“The goal is to exhaust air defenses and the population,” he said on social media on Friday.

Kyiv region authorities said that air quality worsened because of the attacks and warned people in some areas to keep their windows closed and limit their time outdoors.

Four Russian glide bombs destroyed a sorting center belonging to the postal service Nova Poshta in the northern Sumy region, and a drone smashed one of its depots in the Kyiv region, the company said.