(CNN) Ukraine’s air defenses withstood the worst Russian air attack on Kyiv since the beginning of the year late Thursday, the capital region’s military chief said.
The barrage came after Moscow accused Ukraine of trying to kill Russian President Vladimir Putin in a drone strike on the Kremlin late on Wednesday, allegations strongly denied by Kyiv.
“Our city has not experienced such a heavy intensity of attacks since the beginning of this year! Last night, the aggressor launched another large air strike on the capital, “Serhiy Popko, head of the Kyiv city military administration , wrote on Telegram.
All Russian missiles and drones were “destroyed in Kyiv airspace by our air defense forces,” Popko said after Moscow attacked the city with “Shahed-type barrage munitions and missiles, probably ballistic.”
There were no civilian casualties or damage to residential buildings and infrastructure, he added.
Iran has given Russia hundreds of Shahed drones to use in its war in Ukraine. Known as “loitering munitions,” the drones are able to circle for some time in an area before flying their explosive payload towards the chosen target.
Air raid sirens sounded for more than three hours in Kyiv during the attack, Popko said, and explosions were heard in the capital and the southern port city of Odesa early Thursday morning, according to of Ukrainian parliament member Oleksii Honcharenko.
Kyiv’s regional military administration said air defenses had been activated in the capital, and a map by Ukraine’s Ministry of Digital Transformation showed air alerts were sounded in much of the eastern part of the country.
Ukraine’s Air Force said Thursday it shot down and destroyed 18 of 24 drones launched by Russian forces overnight.
Russian airstrikes have targeted Kyiv on three of the last four days, Popko said. But Thursday’s pre-dawn attack comes after extraordinary allegations from Moscow that Ukraine had launched an attempt to kill Putin in a drone strike on the Kremlin.
Video that surfaced on social media showed a bright flash and a puff of smoke on one side of the Kremlin, the official residence of the Russian president and the most powerful symbol of Moscow’s power.
The Kremlin said the attack had failed and the alleged drones had been destroyed. In a statement it considered the alleged attack as terrorism and a deliberate attempt on Putin’s life. “Russia reserves the right to take retaliatory measures where and when it deems appropriate,” it added.
The Russian president was not in the building at the time, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
Ukraine has denied involvement in the alleged strike. “As President Zelensky has said many times before, Ukraine uses all available means to liberate its own territory, not to attack others,” Ukrainian presidential spokesman Sergiy Nykyforov told CNN on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, former Russian official Ilya Ponomarev, who is linked to militant groups in the country, told CNN that he believed the attack was the work of what he called Russian partisans, not the Ukrainian military.
US officials say they are still investigating the incident, and there is no information on who may be responsible.
A Russian oil refinery caught fire
Also early Thursday, fires broke out at two oil refineries in southwestern Russia, following separate alleged drone strikes.
At Russia’s Ilsky oil refinery in the southwestern Krasnodar region, a fire broke out in the refinery’s reservoir, according to the state-run news agency Tass.
“Due to an attack by an unknown drone, a fuel tank at the Ilsky Oil Refinery in the urban-type settlement of Ilsky in the Seversky district caught fire,” Tass quoted the emergency services as saying.
Another drone hit a Russian petroleum products plant near the Ukrainian border during the night, according to Rostov Governor Vasily Golubev. The drone crashed into the construction site of an overpass at the Novoshakhtinsk plant near the village of Kiselevka, causing an explosion and fire, which the plant’s staff immediately extinguished, Golubev said.
It is unclear who is responsible for the drone attack.
It came after Russian state media on Wednesday said a drone strike had ignited a fire that engulfed an oil storage facility in Krasnodar’s Volna port.
The facility is near the Kerch bridge that was set on fire by Ukrainian forces in October 2022. It is unclear how the fuel storage tank caught fire and Ukraine has not commented on the incident.
