Moscow’s army, meanwhile, said its air defences downed 21 Ukrainian drones over Russian territory and the annexed Crimean peninsula, as Kyiv steps up cross border aerial attacks.

Kyiv said Russian forces had launched two missiles and 35 attack drones across Ukraine and that 20 of the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) had bypassed air defence systems.

“The enemy directed some of the attack UAVs along front line territories, trying to hit fuel and energy infrastructure, and civilian and military facilities near the front line and the state border with the Russia,” the air force said in a statement.

Officials in Kyiv have urged Western allies to bolster its air defence capabilities and said gaining control of the country’s airspace is a priority for this year.

The air force statement said that air defence systems mainly in eastern and southern regions had downed just 15 of the Iranian-designed attack drones.

Authorities said the barrage damaged various civilian infrastructure in Kyiv and the regions of Dnipropetrovsk and Kharkiv, where officials said two people were injured.

Ukrenergo, a Ukrainian energy provider, confirmed one of its substations in a central region had been hit.

Separately, in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, prosecutors said a Russian S-300 missile attack had killed one person and wounded another.

“A 38-year-old man who was riding a bicycle home from work was killed as a result of an attack. A 50-year-old woman was injured. She was taken to the hospital,” prosecutors said in a statement.

In the southern region of Kherson, which the Kremlin claimed to have annexed along with the Donetsk region in 2022, the governor said Russian shelling had killed one man and wounded his wife.

In the southern Mykolaiv region, falling debris from a downed Russian drone injured one man, officials said.