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Air Force: Ukraine downs 31 Russian drones overnight

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Air Force: Ukraine downs 31 Russian drones overnight
First responders are working at the scene of Russia's attack in Kharkiv in the early hours of March 23. (State Emergency Service/Telegram)

Ukraine shot down 31 of 34 Shahed-type drones Russia launched overnight on March 23 from Kursk region and Cape Chauda in occupied Crimea, the Air Force said in its morning update.

Anti-aircraft missile units of the Air Force and mobile fire units were engaged in repelling the aerial assault. The attack drones were downed over Poltava, Mykolaiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson oblasts.

Russian forces also targeted Donetsk Oblast with at least four S-300 anti-aircraft guided missiles. It is unclear whether the missiles were intercepted.

In Kharkiv, residents heard explosions shortly after midnight on March 23. A drone struck a three-story building in the city, causing fire on an area of 150 square meters. Ukraine's State Emergency Service reported in the morning that one of their employees, as well as a police officer were injured after their dispatch to the site, as another drone hit the area.

Two emergency vehicles were also damaged in the attack.

On March 22, Russia launched another large-scale drone and missile attack against Ukrainian cities, targeting several Ukrainian cities, including Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, and Kryvyi Rih. The attacks were primarily aimed at the energy infrastructure.

Around 700,000 people in Kharkiv were left with power flowing one of the largest Russian attacks against Ukraine’s critical infrastructure on March 22.

ISW: Russia hopes to collapse Ukraine’s energy grid amid air defense shortage
Russia’s attacks against Ukraine overnight on March 21-22 represented “the largest series of combined drone and missile strikes targeting Ukrainian energy infrastructure since the start of the full-scale invasion,” the ISW said.
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Olena Goncharova

Head of North America desk

Olena Goncharova is the Head of North America desk at The Kyiv Independent, where she has previously worked as a development manager and Canadian correspondent. She first joined the Kyiv Post, Ukraine's oldest English-language newspaper, as a staff writer in January 2012 and became the newspaper’s Canadian correspondent in June 2018. She is based in Edmonton, Alberta. Olena has a master’s degree in publishing and editing from the Institute of Journalism in Taras Shevchenko National University in Kyiv. Olena was a 2016 Alfred Friendly Press Partners fellow who worked for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette for six months. The program is administered by the University of Missouri School of Journalism in Columbia.

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