Russian forces fired 45 drones over Ukraine on Sunday during a five and a half-hour bombardment. As the war moves into its third year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky began to reorganize his war cabinet.
The Ukrainian air force claimed in a statement to have downed forty of the Iranian-made Shahed drones over nine separate locations, including the suburbs of Kyiv, the nation's capital.
Russia Launches 45 Drones in Mass Barrage of Ukraine
Ukrainian emergency personnel douse water to extinguish flames after a fire erupted at the site of a drone attack in Kharkiv, on February 10, 2024. Seven people, including three children, were killed in a Russian drone attack on the city of Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine, the regional governor said.
Agriculture and coastal infrastructure were the targets of the five-and-a-half-hour onslaught, according to posts made on Telegram by representatives of Ukraine's southern military forces. They stated that a strike in the Mykolaiv district had injured one person, causing a fire and damaged neighboring residential buildings, as per NY Post.
Serhiy Lysak, the chief of the military administration in the Dnipropetrovsk area of Ukraine, reported that another person was hurt when a fire started as a result of falling debris from a wrecked drone.
Additionally, Moldovan border police reported on Sunday that pieces of a "Shahed-type drone" had been discovered close to the Ukrainian border, in the southern town of Etulia. However, they maintained there was no threat to the local population from the wreckage.
Regarding the Russian troops' nocturnal strikes on Ukraine's Izmail area on Friday, the border police said in a statement that "there is a suspicion that the detected drone debris is one of the drones shot down by the Ukrainian anti-aircraft system."
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Zelensky Reshuffle War Cabinet
The strikes take place as Zelensky continues to shuffle military leaders in an effort to keep up the pressure on the Russian forces that are attacking. Lt. Gen. Alexander Pavlyuk, a former deputy minister of defense, will take over as head of Ukraine's ground forces, Kyiv said on Sunday.
Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, who was nominated on Thursday to succeed Gen. Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the departing head of Ukraine's armed forces, previously held the position. Additionally, fresh presidential orders designated Maj. Gen. Ihor Plahuta as commander of Ukraine's territory defense forces, Brig. Gen. Ihor Skibiuk as commander of the country's air assault forces, and Yurii Sodol, the previous head of the country's marine corps, as commander of Ukraine's combined forces.
As Kyiv's troops are primarily on the defense, incoming commander-in-chief Syrskyi has said that two of his top priorities are enhancing troop rotation at the front lines and using the potential of modern technologies.
Per The Hill, US lawmakers are still drafting legislation to provide further help to Ukraine, even as Kyiv hopes for a fresh start in its conflict with Russia as it approaches two years of warfare.
A $95.3 billion package subsidizing Ukraine, Israel, and other national security goals was approved by the Senate on Friday. This comes after an earlier attempt in Congress last week to enact border security requirements and finance Israel and Ukraine failed.
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