(CNN) – Remains of a downed drone were found outside Ukraine’s parliament building this Saturday morning, after the country’s defense systems largely managed to fend off a large-scale drone attack launched overnight by Russia.
Ukraine managed to shoot down 58 of the 67 Shahed drones launched by Russia, the Ukrainian Air Force said in a Telegram post on Saturday. The attack targeted several locations, including the northeastern city of Sumy, the southern city of Kherson, the central Poltava region and the capital of Kyiv.
The head of Kyiv’s military administration, Serhii Popko, described it as “another massive drone attack” on the city, in a post on his Telegram channel.
At least one drone appeared to have been shot down over the Ukrainian parliament, as images shared online by the parliament showed debris strewn outside the building’s entrance.
Kyiv’s air defenses managed to shoot down all the Russian drones that began approaching the city around 3 a.m. local time (8 p.m. ET), Popko said, and none of the drones managed to hit their targets.
There were no impacts to critical or residential infrastructure during the attack, the region’s military chief, Ruslan Kravchenko, said in a separate Telegram post. There were also no reported casualties from the attack, in which air raid sirens sounded for more than eight hours, Kravchenko added.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been pushing hard in recent days for more air defenses for Ukraine in the face of a barrage of Russian attacks across the country.
Addressing a forum in Italy on Friday, Zelensky highlighted how Russia has launched “missiles, attack drones and heavy aircraft bombs” against Ukrainian cities and towns. “Big or small, they don’t care,” he added.
On September 1 and 2, the western city of Kharkiv came under respective missile and bomb attacks. A day later, Russian forces launched a missile attack on a military educational facility in the central city of Poltava, killing more than 55 people. On September 4, the western city of Lviv, long considered virtually safe from Russian attacks, was hit by a missile attack on civilian infrastructure, killing seven people.
Darya Tarasova contributed to this report.
