Russia intensifies drone and missile attacks against kyiv, causing seven deaths and 80 injuries

Russian terror does not stop in kyiv. At noon today, in the umpteenth attack with the feared jet-powered drones, the Kremlin's unmanned aviation hit the building of the National Academy of Sciences, which at that time was full of people, as well as the Dobrobut hospital, in the center of the capital. At the moment the rescue services count seven dead and 80 injured. These bombings, together with those that have taken place all night and that include a food market, have caused a series of fires throughout the city and the air to be almost unbreathable.

These are two very symbolic bombings. On the one hand, the National Academy of Sciences, neighboring the Taras Shevchenko University and founded in 1918, is a historic building where the best scientists in the country work. In this institution thousands of students study in different branches, such as botany, chemistry or physics.

This attack joins the hundreds of bombings that have occurred in recent months against Ukrainian book publishers and other academic institutions key to the country's cultural identity. In the case of the hospital, the Dobrobut clinic is just one of dozens of medical centers attacked in the Ukrainian capital, and the perfect definition of a war crime.

The weapon used is the Shahed 5 jet drone (Or Geranium 5, if you go by its Russian name), a drone similar in design to the first Shahed from Iran but with a jet engine that replaces the old propeller engine, which is much slower and easier to shoot down. Now, in a new strategy of imposing panic on the population, Russia no longer sends large swarms of drones to saturate the air defenses, but rather small groups of two or three devices, but throughout the day, so the alarms extend for more than 10 hours in which the explosions do not stop.

The capital also suffers daily from terrible attacks by Russian ballistic missiles, a weapon much more destructive than drones due to their enormous size. Due to the shortage of Patriot anti-aircraft missiles, one of the few systems capable of shooting down this weapon, Russia attacks the capital with absolute impunity. Today, the strategy of bombarding the Ukrainian rear with this violence is considered one of the Kremlin's great bets to subdue Ukraine after almost five years of war and a front in which the Z troops are unable to advance.

The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) "believes that Putin's modified theory of victory depends largely on Russia's ability to launch cheap jet-powered Geranium-type drones on a large scale and with relatively high penetration rates, requirements that Ukraine's interceptor program seeks to address. Putin probably does not envision Russia's long-range strike campaign against Ukraine lasting indefinitely, as he is likely trying to force Ukraine to capitulate before the spring of 2027".