Kyiv mayor reports blasts in city, air defence systems intercept missiles in region

Kyiv’s Shevchenkovskiy district has been rocked by explosions, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko reported.

“Explosions in the Shevchenkovskiy district of the capital. Services are already dispatched there,” he noted.

Head of the region’s military administration Oleksiy Kuleba added that air defence systems were intercepting targets in the region, asking residents to stay in shelters.

Telegram channels claim that the Ukrainian capital has been targeted by Shahed kamikaze drones that Moscow buys in Iran.

Klitschko later confirmed that the kamikaze drones were used in the attack. According to him, 10 Shaheds had been downed over Kyiv and the Kyiv region.

In the morning of 14 December, air raid sirens went off in several regions of Ukraine. Ukrainian media report that Kyiv residents heard drones and explosions as well as saw several bursts of light.

In late August, The Washington Post noted that Iran had delivered the first batch of Shahed drones to Russia. This shipment was believed to represent only one part of the deal. The newspaper’s sources claimed that Iran was planning to deliver several hundreds of Shahed drones to Moscow. Moreover, The Washington Post reported in October that Iran and Russia had struck a deal to supply Fateh-110 and Zolfaghar ballistic missiles, Muhajer-6 drones and even more Shahed drones.

The US and the EU earlier slapped sanctions on the Aviation Industries Research Center, Iran’s producers of Shahed drones.

The WP also claimed that Moscow and Tehran reached a secret deal to roll out production of drones in Russia, aiming to jointly manufacture hundreds of them.