Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged allies to provide Ukraine with air defense weapons after a wave of explosives-laden Russian drones hit Kyiv on Monday, killing four people.
"To guarantee the protection of our skies and reduce the possibilities for Russian terrorists to zero, we need significantly more air defense systems and more missiles for those systems,'' he said in his nightly video address Monday.
"The world can and must stop this terror," he said.
Some of the drones that hit Kyiv on Monday set buildings ablaze, while another ripped a hole in one building. Zelenskyy said Ukrainian forces had shot down 37 drones and some cruise missiles during a 12-hour period.
The attacks came a week after Russian missile strikes broke months of relative calm in Kyiv.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Monday that the attacks continue "to demonstrate [Russian President Vladimir] Putin's brutality." She said the United States will hold Russia accountable for "its war crimes."
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was "deeply disturbed by the continuing missile and drone attacks against Ukrainian cities and towns," according to U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric. Guterres called for the attacks "to immediately cease and for urgent de-escalation."
Ukrainian officials said the drones were Iranian-made Shahed models. Russia has used them to carry out so-called kamikaze attacks, in which the aircraft is intentionally crashed into a target.
Zelenskyy, citing Ukrainian intelligence services, previously alleged that Russia had ordered 2,400 of the Shahed drones from Iran and then rebranded them as Geran-2 drones — meaning "geranium" in Russian. Iran has denied supplying Russia with drones.
U.S. State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel said Monday that Iran's supplying the drones to Russia is a violation of a U.N. Security Council resolution endorsing the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and six world powers.
A senior U.S. defense official said Monday that Russia was hitting civilian targets indiscriminately "to instill terror among the Ukrainian population."
"The targets that the Russians are selecting speak for themselves ... nonmilitary targets, innocent civilians with no military value," the defense official said.
The drones pack an explosive charge and can linger over targets before nosediving into them. They are relatively cheap, costing about $20,000. Western nations have promised to bolster Ukrainian air defenses with systems that can shoot down drones, but much of that weaponry has yet to arrive.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said Monday's barrage came in successive waves of 28 drones, with the central Shevchenko district one of the neighborhoods hit, the same area where Russian missiles struck last week. Some Ukrainians say they fear the drone attacks could become commonplace as Russia tries to avoid depleting its stockpiles of precision long-range missiles.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said he asked the European Union Foreign Affairs Council for more air defense and supplies of ammunition while calling on the EU to sanction Iran "for providing Russia with drones."
Last week's attacks interrupted a long stretch of relative quiet in Kyiv.
Putin said those strikes and the ones elsewhere were in retaliation for an attack on the Kerch Bridge linking the Russian mainland to the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia seized in 2014.
In other developments Monday, Russia and Ukraine carried out a prisoner swap.
The Ukraine presidency's chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, said 108 Ukrainians were freed, all of them women.
The Russian Defense Ministry said 110 Russians were released, including 72 seamen from commercial vessels who had been held since February.
Also Monday, a Russian warplane crashed into a residential area in the Russian port city of Yeysk, engulfing an apartment building in fire and killing four people.
The Russian Defense Ministry said the plane was on a training mission when one of its engines caught fire. The plane's crew safely ejected before the crash.
Local authorities said the plane crash ignited a massive fire, engulfing several floors of a nine-story apartment building in Yeysk, on the Sea of Azov. In addition to the four deaths, officials said six people were missing and 25 others injured.
The Defense Ministry said the plane was a Su-34 bomber, a supersonic twin-engine plane that Russia has been using during its war in Ukraine.
Some information for this story came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
