DEVELOPING STORYDEVELOPING STORY,
Air-raid sirens heard in the capital in the pre-dawn hours with residents urged to take shelter.
Three explosions have been heard in the centre of Kyiv, as Ukraine said it had shot down a number of Iranian-made Shahed drones.
Mayor Vitali Klitschko said 10 Shahed drones had been shot down by Ukraine’s air defences, while emergency services had been dispatched to the central Shevchenkivskyi district.
“Details later,” he added on his Telegram channel. It was not possible to independently verify Klitschko’s claim.
Oleksiy Goncharenko, a Ukrainian politician, said on Twitter he had heard three explosions by 6.30am local time (04:30 GMT).
The air-raid alarm had gone off at 5.55am (03:55 GMT) with residents urged to stay in shelters until the all clear.
“Ukrainians wake up not from alarm clocks, but from explosions,” Goncharenko wrote. “Thanks to neighboring Russia! Good morning!”
Air defence systems were activated and “hitting targets” Kyiv Oblast governor Oleksiy Kuleba said.
The blasts came as Ukraine calls on its allies to provide it with more advanced air defence systems to help it shoot down Russian missiles and drones that have devastated the country’s energy infrastructure and left millions without heating in the bitter cold of winter.
Zelenskyy said other areas experiencing “very difficult” conditions with power supplies included the capital Kyiv and Kyiv region, as well as four regions in western Ukraine and the Dnipropetrovsk region in the centre of the country.
Reports on Tuesday said the United States was finalising plans to send its sophisticated Patriot air defence system to Ukraine.
According to officials, the US plan would be to send one Patriot battery. A truck-mounted Patriot battery includes up to eight launchers, each of which can hold four missiles.
The entire system, which includes a phased array radar, a control station, computers and generators, typically requires about 90 soldiers to operate and maintain. However, only three soldiers are needed to actually fire it, according to the US Army.
Moscow has been hitting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure roughly every week since early October as it has been forced to retreat on some battlefronts in its near 10 month old war.
A barrage of missiles last week killed at least four people and knocked out power just as emergency outages following earlier raids were coming to an end.
In October, several people were killed in Kyiv following a series of attacks including by so-called kamikaze drones.
