Ukraine war: Vitali Klitschko said that Kiev was attacked again by a Russian drone

Russia launched a massive new drone attack overnight on the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, local officials said, killing at least one person.

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said a man died when the wreckage of a drone fell near a petrol station. A woman was injured.

He said that air defenses shot down more than 20 drones heading towards Kiev before a “new wave of drones” hit the city.

Russia has recently stepped up its attacks on Kiev, trying to overwhelm the capital’s defenses.

Earlier on Sunday, air raid alerts were activated in 12 regions of Ukraine, from Volyn in the northwest to Dnipropetrovsk in the southeast.

Klitschko, in a social media post, urged Kyiv residents to “stay in shelters”, warning that the night would be “difficult”.

He said that at least two high-rise buildings in different neighborhoods of the capital caught fire after being hit by shrapnel from a drone.

Emergency workers have been deployed.

There were also reports of explosions in the city of Zhitomir, west of Kiev.

The air alert was later raised in the capital and across the country.

In its recent attacks, Russia has used so-called kamikaze drones as well as an array of cruise and ballistic missiles.

The attacks come ahead of a widely expected Ukrainian counterattack.

And on Saturday, a senior Ukrainian security official told the BBC that the country was ready to launch such an operation.

Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s powerful National Security and Defense Council, said an offensive to retake territory from President Vladimir Putin’s occupying forces could start “tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, or a week later”.

Ukraine had been planning a counterattack for months. But she wanted as much time as possible to train troops and receive military equipment from the Western allies.