Russia and Ukraine exchange overnight drone attacks • FRANCE 24 English

Added: 2026-05-18

[00:00:00]At least then one person killed as well as an 11-year-old boy and a 59-year-old man amongst those injured amid the that huge drone and missile attack overnight.

[00:00:08]Targeted mostly the city of Odessa in the south, Dnipro in the southeast, as well as others. Residential buildings, school, and a kindergarten said to have been hit in Odessa. Comes as in Russia drones were downed overnight in the southern region of Rostov after four people were killed over the weekend in the Moscow region as Ukraine launched its biggest overnight drone attack on the capital in more than a year. Well, let's bring up to date then with all the latest. We're going to cross to Kharkiv in Ukraine, talk to our correspondent Emmanuel Shahs who joins us from there.

[00:00:37]Emmanuel, bring us up to date then.

[00:00:38]What's the latest that you're hearing on these attacks?

[00:00:44]Well, indeed, dozens of people have been injured following those overnight strikes. You were mentioning the city of Dnipro. Just to give you an idea, there's roughly 1 million people in Dnipro and surroundings who are living in this very, you know, this industrial city, this very big city in southern Ukraine. And the alert last night, the air raid alert lasted over 6 hours. We've had uh testimonies of people who were living in the residential areas impacted. They said that they have been taken taking shelter from the initial, the first wave of drones, and then they came back to their flats, and then there were missile strikes. You've mentioned this, you know, figure, over 520 drones, over 20 missiles were launched at Ukraine. You can imagine the level of anxiety for the population facing uh those strikes. And also to give you an idea of the impact not only on residential building and not only on, you know, people living in the buildings impacted, but the entire rail uh rail uh schedule in the region today uh was impacted also by those strikes. This is from Nikopol, Odessa.

[00:02:05]The harbor city of Odessa in the southern part of the country has also been impacted. An 11-year-old boy uh was injured. An adult also was injured. And the marine, the commander of the Ukrainian marine, uh reports that one of the kamikaze drones, Russian kamikaze drones, also crashed into a uh uh a trade vessel uh of uh China, which would be a first uh indeed. So, uh another night of terror for the Ukrainian population. Meanwhile, Emmanuel, once again, we've seen some signs and wave Ukraine showing more and more of a capacity to fight back over the weekend.

[00:02:43]Absolutely. And those renewed uh strikes, Russian strikes against the Ukrainian population, really stand in stark contrast with Russia's uh capabilities on the front line, on the one hand, and on the other hand, Russian Russian capabilities to defend itself even within the territory of uh Russia.

[00:03:04]Those Ukrainian strikes sometimes are very deep into the Russian territory.

[00:03:10]We've seen over the weekend those strikes against uh uh Moscow and Moscow region. And I'd like to point out that from Ukraine, the authorities, be the army or the government, are very keen to point out that Ukraine, for its part, strikes uh uh military targets, industrial targets. For example, uh warehouses, uh industries that are helping uh uh Russia's war effort against Ukraine. So, uh companies which are building microchips, which are building uh optical material, radio electronic warfare for the Russian army, as well as uh oil refineries, oil terminals, because uh of course, the oil industry is a huge part of Russia's economy and striking in the heart of it means striking in the heart of Russian economy and this weekend has shown that not only does Ukraine increases increases such strikes against Russia but also Russia's air defense capabilities seem more and more enabled to stop such strikes even deep inside the country.