Russian terror does not stop in Kiev. At noon today, in yet another attack with the feared jet-propelled drones, the Kremlin's unmanned aviation struck the building of the National Academy of Sciences, which was full of people at the time, as well as the Dobrobut hospital in the city center. Rescue services currently report seven dead and 80 injured. These bombings, along with those that have occurred throughout the night, including a food market, have caused a series of fires throughout the city, making the air almost unbreathable.
These are two highly symbolic bombings. On one hand, the National Academy of Sciences, located next to Taras Shevchenko University and founded in 1918, is a historic building where the country's top scientists work. Thousands of students study in this institution in different fields such as botany, chemistry, and physics.
This attack adds to the hundreds of bombings that have occurred in recent months against Ukrainian book publishers and other key academic institutions in 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, a perfect definition of a war crime.
The weapon used is the Shahed 5 jet drone (or Geranium 5, according to its Russian designation), a drone with a design similar to the original Shahed from Iran but with a jet engine replacing the old propeller engine, which was much slower and easier to shoot down. Now, in a new strategy to instill panic in the population, Russia no longer sends large swarms of drones to saturate air defenses, but small groups of two or three aircraft throughout the day, extending alarms for more than 10 hours with continuous explosions.
The capital also daily suffers from the terrible attacks of Russian ballistic missiles, a much more destructive weapon than drones due to its enormous size. Due to the shortage of Patriot anti-aircraft missiles, one of the few systems capable of shooting down this armament, Russia attacks the capital with absolute impunity. Currently, the strategy of bombing the Ukrainian rear with this violence is considered one of the Kremlin's major efforts to subdue Ukraine after almost five years of war and a front where Z troops are unable to advance.
Two women react to the bombing in downtown Kiev.Evgeniy MaloletkaAP
The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) "believes that Putin's modified theory of victory largely depends on Russia's ability to launch large-scale, relatively high-penetration jet-propelled drones like Geranium at low cost, a requirement that Ukraine's interceptor program seeks to counter. Putin probably does not envision Russia's long-range attack campaign against Ukraine lasting indefinitely, as he is likely trying to force Ukraine to surrender before spring 2027."
While Russia launched its drones, in Poland, its aviation took off to patrol its entire border with Ukraine to prevent these Russian unmanned aircraft from violating Polish airspace, something that has already happened on other occasions. Air raid sirens were even heard in the city of Lublin. Additionally, in Romania, a Russian drone again entered its airspace, prompting Spanish fighters guarding the NATO border to take off.
The strategy is to create a great shock among the citizens remaining in the cities. Ukrainian analyst Viktor Kovalenko believes that "Russia is specifically bombing Kiev now because that's where all the Western television and press are. This way, Moscow ensures that the world sees daily large fires, people dead in the streets, images of destruction... Ballistic missiles and jet-propelled drones are the Kremlin's tools to continue the war. Furthermore, these attacks are used as an information operation to intimidate the West and force Ukrainians to surrender and accept peace on Russian terms."