On the evening of December 20th, extending into the early hours of the following day, Russia conducted another massive “kamikaze” drone attack on Ukraine. According to Ukraine’s Air Force, Russians deployed a total of 35 Shahed-type drones, attacking the country from three different directions and targeting multiple regions within Ukraine.
The Russian forces launched the Shahed-136/131 drones from the south (Cape Chauda in occupied Crimea), southeast (Russia’s Prymorsko-Akhtarsk), and north (Russia’s Kursk), with attacks occurring in waves from 8:00 p.m. until 3:30 a.m. Air raid alerts were issued in all of Ukraine’s regions except for the western ones.
The Air Force says air defense operations were active in the oblasts of Kyiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Vinnytsia, Cherkasy, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Mykolaiv, Khmelnytskyi, Sumy, Poltava, Chernihiv, and Kirovohrad.
“Last night, in different directions, the defenders of the sky managed to shoot down 34 out of 35 enemy attack UAVs launched,” the Air Force’s statement said.
Officials in Mykolaiv, located in southern Ukraine, confirmed that 13 of the Shahed drones were successfully intercepted and downed in the region. This underscores the significant focus of the attack on this area. Throughout the night, Ukrainian air threat monitoring channels on Telegram reported multiple waves of assaults on Mykolaiv Oblast originating from the Black Sea.
The wreckage of a downed UAV sparked a fire at an agricultural storage facility in the Vesnianka community of Mykolaiv Oblast. Simultaneously, in Kyiv Oblast, debris from the Shahed drones damaged a warehouse at a civilian enterprise, resulting in another fire, as confirmed by regional authorities. Fortunately, both fires were promptly extinguished, and there were no reported injuries.
In recent months, Russia carries Shahed drone attacks against Ukrainian cities every night, sometimes accompanying them with missile strikes.
