Russian drone hits Kyiv school as sheltering children escape harm

A Russian drone hit a school in Kyiv on Thursday as the Ukrainian capital came under another day of aerial attacks, city officials said. Children and staff were in shelters when the drone struck, Mayor Vitalii Klitschko said, and its warhead did not explode. No casualties were reported.

The attack came as Kyiv continued to face repeated air raid alerts, drone strikes and missile attacks in recent weeks. Officials and analysts say the campaign is aimed at terrorising civilians and breaking their will to resist more than four-and-a-half years after Russia's full-scale invasion.

The school building was left with a large hole in its brick facade, exposing a staircase, with burn marks and shattered windows visible at the site. The wider strain of the attacks is also being felt by residents. Maryna Lystopad, 35, said the stress had become overwhelming.

"It's really horrible. I can't take it anymore. I think, I think that soon we're all going to leave. I'm really not doing well," she told The Associated Press. "I'm constantly anxious. I can't relax. I keep thinking that if something happens, if something hits, one of my relatives could be killed."

Lystopad said she had recently travelled to another part of Kyiv and had been "genuinely stressed" throughout the journey. "I kept checking, like, whether anything was flying in, where it was going, where am I supposed to go? Where am I supposed to run?" she said.

While there have been no major shifts on the front line in eastern and southern Ukraine since last year, Ukraine is struggling to fend off intensified Russian attacks on its cities, including ballistic missiles and high-flying jet-powered drones. Reflecting the urgency, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he held a conference call on Thursday with senior military and government officials responsible for protecting infrastructure, as some areas were falling behind on previously agreed steps.

Zelenskyy said the Foreign Ministry and Defence Ministry would review agreements with partner countries on supplying ammunition for air defences and F-16 fighter jets, with an updated delivery schedule to be presented within 24 hours. "It is important that we have additional missiles in October," he said on social media.

In response to the attacks, Ukraine has launched long-range drones at manufacturing plants deep inside Russia and has also targeted Russian drone launch sites. Zelenskyy said Kyiv's forces had struck a site in Russia's south-western Oryol region that is used to store and launch attack drones.

Ukraine says tougher sanctions are needed to stop Russia from obtaining key high-tech components for its weapons. Britain on Thursday imposed sanctions on 31 Russian individuals, entities and ships that it said were linked to disinformation, efforts to evade energy sanctions and the mistreatment of Ukrainian civilians in territories seized by Russia.

Moscow, meanwhile, is pressing its advantage before Ukraine can respond to the latest threats. Klitschko said two Russian drones struck an important bridge across the Dnipro River in Kyiv on Thursday, forcing traffic to be suspended until a safety inspection could be carried out. The Parkovyi data centre in Kyiv, which provides cloud services and server hosting, was also critically damaged after repeated Russian strikes and has stopped operating, the company said. It added on Facebook that client data had been moved to backup sites in the European Union.

Ukrainian officials did not report any energy infrastructure being hit on Thursday, a day after what they said was the biggest Russian attack on the power grid since spring. Wednesday's barrage marked "the beginning of Russia's strike campaign aimed at degrading Ukraine's energy security ahead of winter and forcing Ukraine to capitulate," the Institute for the Study of War said. Russia is expected to step up attacks on electricity supplies as colder weather approaches.

Ukraine is also racing to improve its air defences. It needs US-made Patriot missiles to defend effectively against ballistic missiles, but supplies are short since the Iran war began, and a plan to produce them inside Ukraine could take years to show results. Kyiv is also trying to produce interceptors that can bring down fast-moving jet-powered drones. In a new development, Serhii Beskrestnov, an adviser to Zelenskyy on defence technology, said Russia on Wednesday used for the first time a jet-powered drone fitted with a warhead designed to sever high-voltage pylons. Thursday's strike on the school, the damage in Kyiv and the pressure on infrastructure underlined the wider challenge Ukraine faces as Russia intensifies its aerial campaign.

With PTI Inputs