On the evening of October 4, reports of “Kamikaze” drone strikes in the city of Bila Tserkva, 80 kilometers from Kyiv, were reported. The drones, which Russia has reportedly been using on battlefields since September, are apparently from the Iranian-made Shahed class.
Six explosions were heard by the city’s 200,000 people during the first attack in the Kyiv region since the summer. Oleksiy Kuleba, the governor of the Kyiv Oblast, reported that the six strikes destroyed infrastructure sites, including the barracks of the 72nd Mechanized Brigade, causing a raging fire and injuring one person.
“At this time, the effects of shelling are still being handled. On October 5, early in the morning, Kuleba posted on Telegram that “all the required services, 57 rescuers, and 15 units of emergency services are working on the spot, the fire is still being extinguished.”
It has been suggested that drone assaults may originate from Ukraine’s northern neighbor after “Kamikaze drones,” which carry ammunition and fly directly into targets, were reportedly observed on the Belarus-Ukraine border in late September. According to Euromaidan Press, Iran is said to have supplied Moscow with hundreds of these drones, which are problematic to shoot down due to their small size and low flying height. Tehran, though, denies selling Moscow drones.
Nevertheless, numerous Shahed drones have been shot down by the Ukrainian Armed Forces along the front lines, particularly in the Mykolaiv and Kharkiv areas. The Shahed, however, has never been employed in an attack in Northern Ukraine before.
In the previous week, Ukraine liberated dozens of settlements in Kharkiv, Luhansk, Donetsk, and Kherson as part of its eastern and southern offensive. The Institute for the Study of War reports that Ukrainian forces are advancing “significantly” in the Kherson region and have retaken towns on the eastern bank of the Inhulets River, forcing Russian soldiers to withdraw to Kherson City.
In his evening address on October 4, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stated, “The Ukrainian army is carrying out a relatively swift and powerful advance in the south of our nation as part of the ongoing defense operation.”
After Russian President Vladimir Putin signed the annexation of the four seized territories on October 5 as a result of the fake referendums last month, Ukraine’s recent triumph in the occupied territories is a smack in the face of Moscow. Only North Korea has acknowledged the Ukrainian lands as being a part of Russia, and world leaders have strongly denounced this as being unlawful.
Zelensky proclaimed on October 4 a decree officially prohibiting Ukraine from engaging in negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin in reaction to the attempted annexation.
