DRAMATIC footage shows the heart-stopping moment Ukrainian anti-aircraft guns lit up the night as they countered a massive incoming Russian drone attack.
The heated engagement between the Ukrainian air defence systems took place in Odesa as hundreds of Russian drones were blasted out of the sky.
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Putin has ramped up Russian drone attacks in recent days, targeting cities deep inside Ukraine.
The drone blitz on Odesa, which took place on Thursday night, killed one woman and injured at least 10 other civilians.
Dozens of buildings were damaged, including residential apartments, churches, educational institutions, and the state’s emergency service reports.
The attack is also understood to have destroyed one of Odesa’s main heating pipelines, crippling one of the boilers in the city that provided heating to more than 200 apartment buildings, Kyiv independent reports.
Andriy Yermak, the head of Ukraine’s Presidential Office, called the strike on Odesa a “terrorist attack.”
“(Russian President Vladimir) Putin just likes to fight civilians,” he said.
Odesa was also under siege when Putin’s drone army attacked the city as well as Kyiv in consecutive strikes last week.
Ukrainian officials have warned about the looming threat of an increased Russian attack targeting Ukrainian cities as the winter season kicks in – the most challenging time in the war for Kyiv.
Meanwhile, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday for the first time in nearly two years.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was swift to criticise the call.
He said: “The call opened a ‘Pandora’s box’ by undermining efforts to isolate the Russian leader.”
The Kremlin said the conversation had come at Berlin’s request, and that Putin had told Scholz any agreement to end the war in Ukraine must take Russian security interests into account and reflect “new territorial realities”.
Ukraine said however that phone conversations with Putin brought no added value on the path to achieving a “just peace” in Ukraine but just helped him weaken his isolation.
“Now there may be other conversations, other calls. Just a lot of words,” said Zelenskiy in his evening address.
“And this is exactly what Putin has long wanted: it is extremely important for him to weaken his isolation and to conduct ordinary negotiations.”
Zelensky and other European officials had reportedly cautioned Scholz against the move.
Backing the Ukrainian president, Boris Johnson said: “That is a shameful betrayal of the reality – that Putin has launched a criminal and unjustifiable invasion while Ukraine is an entirely innocent party.
“The only way to bring this war to an end is massively and rapidly to strengthen the position of Ukraine.”
The call comes in the week after Trump was elected as the next US president.
He has suggested he could put a swift end to the war, without explaining how, and repeatedly criticised the scale of Western financial and military aid for Kyiv.
“It sends a bad signal, especially after Trump’s election,” said one Western diplomat, noting their country had told Berlin it was not a good idea.
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