Analysts said the drones are believed to carry an “explosive warhead” and are guided through a “preprogrammed flight profile using a global navigation satellite system.”
A wave of so-called kamikaze drones struck Ukrainian cities during the morning rush hour on Monday, killing at least nine civilians.
One of the 28 drones to terrorize the capital city, Kyiv, hit a residential building in the central Shevchenkivskyi district. Although many were shot down by Ukraine’s armed forces, five were believed to have caused explosions in the city. Russia unleashed a total of 43 drones across Ukraine, according to the Ukrainian Air Force.
The mayor of Kyiv, Vitali Klitschko, said the drones, which carried explosives, killed five people in the capital, including a pregnant woman and an elderly woman. Four others were killed in Sumy, the BBC reported. Rescue crews continue to search through the rubble for victims.
Ukrainian officials said that critical energy infrastructure had been hit in Kyiv as well as in Sumy and Dnipro. According to Ukraine’s Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, hundreds of houses have been left without electricity.
According to an analysis by Janes, the global agency for open-source defense intelligence, the drones, or “loitering munition autonomous-swarm pusher-prop aerial drones,” are believed to have been Iranian-made Shahed-136s or a smaller version, Shahed-131.
“The recent markings in the Russia-Ukraine conflict translate to the name Geran-2, like the name adapted by the Ansar Allah (Houthis), a non-state armed group in Yemen as Wa’aed,” a Janes analyst said in an email to Yahoo News. “The initial sights of Shahed-131 happened in 2014.”
