The Ukrainian authorities on Monday said that they had repelled a “massive” Russian attack on Kyiv in the early morning hours. They said it was the eighth attack on the Ukrainian capital in just over two weeks, in what appears to be an escalation by Russia of its long-running air campaign against the city.
Serhii Popko, the head of Kyiv’s military administration, said that Ukrainian forces had shot down nearly two dozen Russian drones around Kyiv, and the Ukrainian air force said it had intercepted 53 of 56 Russian drones overnight.
Mr. Popko said that in contrast to recent attacks, “this one was massive,” and that an air-raid alert was announced about 2 a.m. in the capital and remained in effect for about three and a half hours.
The Ukrainian military’s claims could not be independently verified, and there was no comment from the Russian authorities.
One woman was injured by debris from a downed drone, the authorities said, but they reported no significant damage in the capital. The Ukrainian government did acknowledge, however, that shelling of energy infrastructure in five other regions had caused temporary power cuts over the past day.
Russia has been intensifying its assaults on the Ukrainian capital and other big cities since the beginning of the month, starting with an assault on Sept. 2, on the first day of the school year, when Russia fired a volley of missiles at Kyiv and other cities.
Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second biggest city, in the east not far from the Russian border, has also been battered by strikes in recent weeks, including an attack on Sunday that hit an apartment building, killing one and injuring more than 40 people.
Kyiv’s and Moscow’s troops are also engaged in fierce fighting in the Kursk region in western Russia, after Ukraine invaded last month in a surprise cross-border attack, capturing several villages and a small town.
The state of the fighting in the area is fluid, with both sides launching counterattacks. Russia has managed to reclaim several villages in the past few days, but Ukrainian forces breached the border in a new location around the same time, although it was unclear whether they had managed to hold onto territory there.
Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, on Monday said that he had asked the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross to visit Ukrainian-controlled territories in the Kursk region and “join humanitarian efforts” in the area.
Ukraine, he added, “is ready to facilitate their work and prove its adherence to international humanitarian law.”
Whether the United Nations and the Red Cross will be able to gain access to the area in the face of heavy fighting remains to be seen.
In a statement last month, a spokesman for the Red Cross in Ukraine said the organization was ready to provide support “should we receive the necessary security guarantees for our humanitarian access from both parties to the conflict.”
Russia has not asked the United Nations and the Red Cross to visit Ukrainian-controlled areas in the Kursk region. Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, called Mr. Sybiha’s invitation “provocative.” Mirjana Spoljaric, the head of the Red Cross, was visiting Moscow on Monday.
The latest attacks on Kyiv involved mostly drones, in a departure from Russia’s usual approach of launching waves of different weapons — ballistic and cruise missiles, along with drones — at Ukrainian cities to complicate the work of air defense systems.
In the past, Russia has often used drones to probe Ukrainian defenses and exhaust Ukrainian air defense ammunition, in anticipation of future and larger attacks.
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine on Monday said that more than 640 Russian attack drones had been launched against Ukraine since the beginning of the month. The Ukrainian Army said it used antiaircraft missiles, electronic warfare units and mobile groups firing heavy gun machine mounted on trucks to repel the attack on Monday.
In addition to the assaults on Ukrainian cities, Russia is using drones on the battlefield. Ukraine’s 59th Brigade reported that nearly 160 Russian drones had attacked their positions in the past 24 hours near Pokrovsk, a strategic city in eastern Ukraine that the Russians have been closing in on in recent weeks.
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