Ukraine: 317 Russian drones overnight, 105 of them jet-powered – where they struck and what changes for electricity

Russia attacked Ukraine only with unmanned aircraft, but in very large numbers, from 18:00 on Sunday, November 8, to the morning of Monday, November 9. Ukraine’s Air Force counted 317 attack drones, 105 of them jet-powered Shahed types, and reported that by 08:00, 276 targets had been shot down or electronically neutralised, while some drones were still in the air.

In its announcement the Ukrainian Air Force also lists the other types used by the Russian side: S8000 Banderol/Dan-T, Gerbera and “Parodiya” decoy drones, sent to wear down air defences. Launches were made from Bryansk, Oryol, Kursk, Primorsko-Akhtarsk, Shatalovo and Millerovo inside Russia, from occupied Donetsk, and from Chauda and Hvardiiske in occupied Crimea.

Of the 276 recorded as shot down, 271 were Shaheds (81 of them jet-powered) and five were S8000, Gerbera or other types. Aircraft, surface-to-air missile units, electronic warfare and unmanned systems, as well as mobile fire groups, took part in the defence. Strikes were recorded at 31 locations and falling debris at nine others. The Ukrainian Navy added that its forces downed three Shaheds or Gerberas within the past 24 hours.

Injured in Kremenchuk, fires in Khmelnytskyi

The heaviest blow of the night was taken by Kremenchuk, in the Poltava region. The Poltava regional military administration reported early strikes by drones at two points in the city, an apartment block and a hotel, where fires broke out. A 16-year-old boy was seriously injured and taken to hospital. The State Emergency Service raised the injured to seven in the morning and said rescuers evacuated 15 residents from the sites (its update). A private enterprise in the Hlobyne community was also hit, with no casualties.

In Khmelnytskyi, a Russian drone hit a residential area of the city and detached houses caught fire, with no reports of dead or wounded by dawn. The Odesa regional administration wrote of a “massive attack on energy,” with power outages in its north, while in Kyiv the city military administration sounded the alarm for drones five times between 20:21 and 01:54.

The consequences for the electricity system were visible from Sunday evening. Ukrenergo announced that on Monday hourly outages for all consumer categories apply in parts of the regions, with 1.5 to 4 groups of consumers without power at the same time, and power limits for industry around the clock, as a result of the massive Russian attacks on energy facilities.

The attack comes straight after the night of Saturday into Sunday, when Russia launched 164 drones and three Kh-59/69 missiles, leaving more than 600,000 consumers in the Dnipropetrovsk region without power. Earlier, in the early hours of Saturday, November 7, ballistic missiles had damaged Kyiv’s Northern Bridge.