• Wednesday’s explosions rocked Shevchenkivskyi in the city’s core.
• Four residential buildings and a city office were hit.
• Ukrainian officials said they shot down 12 Iranian-made drones.

During a Russian raid on the capital city of Kyiv early on Wednesday morning, Ukrainian officials claim to have shot down more than a dozen drones.

Explosions shook the Shevchenkivskyi area in the city’s center when air defenses shot down drones that were allegedly produced in Iran.

Since October, Russia has routinely used missiles and drones to attack Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.

And Kyiv Governor Oleksiy Kuleba accused Russia of “continuing its energy terror against our country” with the latest wave of drone attacks.

But the national energy grid manager Ukrenergo said that Wednesday’s strikes did not damage any energy facilities and hailed the “brilliant work of the air defense forces” in a post to its Telegram account.

President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed that all 13 Shahed drones launched by Russia on Wednesday had been shot down by Ukrainian military.

A drone fragment, according to Governor Kuleba, struck four residential structures and a city office. However, a representative for the city’s emergency services told Ukrainian media that there had been no reports of casualties from the strike.

According to a witness named Svetlana, the first attack happened at 06:30 (04:30 GMT) local time.

“The rumble was like from a moped, such was the sound it made,” she said. “It fell behind the houses and then there was a strong roar, an explosion.”

She added: “Winter is coming, how can people survive? Lord, what do they want from us? They do not let Ukrainians live.”

An additional Kyiv homeowner named Anton told the Media that the blasts’ flying glass almost missed his sleeping children.

“Let this Putin die,” he said. “I didn’t do anything to him, but he does this to me.”

The strikes happened as UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths was in Kyiv, after visiting the southern cities of Mykolaiv and Kherson.

He told the Media they were a reminder of how Ukraine was “still suffering from the war right across the country, not just on the front lines”.

The urgent need was to help Ukraine restore energy supplies, including by providing generators to the country, as “electricity is the gateway to life”.

Mr. Griffiths added. “If you don’t have electricity, you don’t get warm, you don’t get hospital treatment, you don’t get to go to school, you don’t get to have transport.”

Iran first denied providing Russia with the “kamikaze” drones used in the deadly assaults on October 17th, but Ukraine has since accused Iran of doing so.

Iran later acknowledged deploying a small number of drones to Moscow “several months” before the conflict.

President Zelensky of Ukraine responded by claiming that this was untrue and that many more Iranian drones were in use.

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