Ukraine downs Russian drones but some get through due to gaps in air protection
The HinduUkrainian air defences downed 32 of 35 Shahed exploding drones launched by Russia early Tuesday, most of them in the Kyiv region, officials said, in a bombardment that exposed gaps in the country's air protection after almost 16 months of war. Russian forces mostly targeted the region around the Ukrainian capital in a nighttime drone attack lasting around three hours, officials said, but Ukrainian air defences in the area shot down about two dozen of them. “There is a general lack of air defense assets to cover a country like Ukraine with a dome like Israel has,” he said, in a reference to Israel's Iron Dome aerial defence system. The latest aerial assaults behind Ukraine's front line coincided with the early stages of a Ukrainian counteroffensive, as it aims to dislodge the Kremlin's forces from territory occupied since Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022.