“Bitches”, shouted the Ukrainian soldier. He had just fired his Kalashnikov light machine gun at several drones that were flying low and slow over central Kyiv on Monday morning, the tell-tale noise of their two-stroke engines identifying them as Iranian-made Shahed 136s.
Other troops nearby also lifted their rifles to the sky, aiming at the propeller-driven drones. Moments later, one crashed in a ball of flames into a street. Another went into a steep dive and exploded into a residential building next to the head office of an energy company.
“All night and all morning the enemy terrorises the civilian population. Kamikaze drones and missiles are attacking all of Ukraine,” president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.