According to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Russia launched more than 850 Shahed drones at Ukraine between Wednesday and Thursday morning. From midnight on 14 October until 9:00 a.m. on Thursday, 15 October, there were more than 850, Zelenskyy wrote on Facebook, as reported by Ukrinform. According to his account, six people died in the attacks – three in Kropyvnytskyi and three more in the Dnipropetrovsk region.
“Practically the entire day yesterday and the entire night, a massed Shahed attack continued, there were constant waves, and not a single hour was our sky free of them,” Suspilne quotes the president as saying. Some of the drones were shot down, but there were “unfortunately also dozens of impacts.” According to Zelenskyy, clean-up work is continuing in dozens of Ukrainian cities and communities, with rescue workers and repair brigades deployed.
Where the drones struck
According to Zelenskyy, one of the largest attacks hit the Kirovohrad region. Impacts were also reported in Kyiv and the Kyiv region, as well as in the Dnipropetrovsk, Odesa, Rivne, Kharkiv, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Mykolaiv, Vinnytsia, Zhytomyr, Khmelnytskyi, Poltava and Ivano-Frankivsk regions. In Kropyvnytskyi, the administrative centre of the Kirovohrad region, 25 locations were hit, according to the rescue services, including enterprises, logistics facilities, warehouses and residential buildings; three people died and six were injured. On the night of 15 October, Russian troops also attacked the Dnipropetrovsk region more than ten times with guided aerial bombs and drones, as Suspilne reports, citing the regional administration. According to its morning report, three people died there and three more were injured.
Zelenskyy sees a link to sanctions relief
The president also made the attacks understandable in the context of recent decisions by Washington. “Obviously, Russia deliberately moved to such an escalation of attacks after it received sanctions relief and saw attempts to put pressure on Ukraine,” Zelenskyy said. Moscow uses every sign of weakening international pressure to intensify its attacks. On 9 October, after a phone call with Vladimir Putin, US President Donald Trump announced an agreement on the supply of Russian diesel fuel to the US and global markets; the US Treasury Department issued a temporary licence exempting Russian diesel from part of the sanctions until 7 April 2027. Zelenskyy criticised the agreement at the time as a sign of weakness and warned that Moscow could respond with new attacks.
The president called for more decisive decisions by partners, stable support and, above all, a strengthening of air defence. Addressing the United States, he said: “It is important that everyone in America does not stand on the side of the aggressor, but on the side of our protection of life and our attempts to end this war and guarantee security.”
On Wednesday evening, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence also reported that SpaceX was maintaining a speed limit of 161 km/h for Starshield terminals (the “military package”) in motion. Earlier, Serhii Beskrestnov, technology adviser to the president and known as Flash, said that SpaceX had introduced restrictions on the operating speed of Starlink terminals in motion overnight without warning. According to the Ministry of Defence, the restrictions identified made it more difficult to operate unmanned systems, logistics and capabilities for medium-range attacks by the defence forces.
Editor’s note: The figures on casualties and impacts come from Ukrainian authorities and the president; they cannot be independently verified.
