In a sign of simmering political tension within the Ukrainian ranks, Volodymyr Zelensky has clashed with Kyiv mayor and former boxer Vitali Klitschko after three residents died in a missile strike because they were locked out of a bomb shelter.

There is no love lost between the pair, who have clashed since the war began, and in a scathing attack on Klitschko, Zelensky said that as well as facing the Russian enemy, ‘we also have internal ones’.

A furious Zelensky said if Kyiv’s local officials were incapable of protecting residents by keeping bomb shelters open, they will be prosecuted and face a ‘knockout’ blow in a thinly veiled dig at the former heavyweight boxing champion. 

Police have now opened a criminal investigation after a nine-year-old girl, her mother and another woman were killed in the Russian missile strike on Thursday after the air raid shelter they ran to failed to open. 

Zelensky, in his nightly video message, said shelters ‘must be kept accessible. Never again should we see a repeat of the situation that occurred last night in Kyiv.’ 

This was ‘very clearly’ the duty of local authorities to ‘ensure the shelters are available and accessible around the clock’. 

‘It is painful to see the negligence of this duty. It is painful to see casualties. And if the duty is not fulfilled on the ground, it is the direct responsibility of law enforcement bodies to prosecute.’

In earlier comments to reporters in Moldova, Zelensky said that as well as facing the Russian enemy, ‘we also have internal ones’. He said the response could be a ‘knockout’ blow, a veiled dig at Klitschko, a former heavyweight boxing champion. 

‘People will answer for the fact that there were those who couldn’t get into the bomb shelter and, unfortunately, died. As if it wasn’t enough to have Russia as an enemy, we also have internal ones,’ a visibly angry Zelensky said before adding, ‘there could be a ‘knockout’. 

Zelensky and Klitschko have butted heads since the war began. 

In December, the Ukrainian President criticised Klitschko and his city officials had not done enough to provide enough emergency shelters to help Ukrainians without power and heat after Russian attacks on the energy system.

‘Unfortunately, local authorities have not performed well in all cities. In particular, there are a lot of complaints in Kyiv,’ Zelensky said at the time. 

‘To put it mildly, more work is needed,’ he said, adding the level of services available in many Kyiv centres was not good enough.

‘Please pay attention – the people of Kyiv need more support … a lot of [them] have been without power for 20 or even 30 hours. We expect quality work from the mayor’s office.’ 

Klitschko later dismissed the criticism about the preparations for winter, saying he believed it was driven by politics and that it looked ‘strange’ to foreign governments that are supporting Ukraine. 

‘It looks strange when we are united against a single enemy, but we start to fight within the country,’ he said.

‘Our foreign partners say ‘you have a common enemy, but you cannot work things out among yourselves.”

‘I am convinced that politics is behind this, because representatives of one political group began to run around trying to find faults (in Kyiv),’ Klitschko said at the time.

Within Zelensky’s circle, Klitschko, who was elected as mayor of Kyiv in 2014, is seen as a serious political rival still. 

The Kyiv mayor is reportedly planning to resurrect his UDAR political party and could could become leader of an alliance of disgruntled regional elites, according to think tank Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. 

‘As Ukrainian politics begins to come back to life, the conflict between the presidential administration and the Kyiv mayor is only like to grow,’ researcher Konstantin Skorkin said. 

Klitschko, now in his ninth year as mayor, was seen as one of Zelensky’s highest-profile political opponents before the Russian invasion and they often clashed over politics. 

Klitschko is an ally of former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko, the leader of the opposition party European Solidarity, and the pair could pose a threat to Zelensky’s leadership. 

In 2019, Klitschko lashed out at Zelensky and accused his government of an ‘illegal’ attempt to curb his powers as Kyiv’s mayor. 

Zelensky controls the majority of Ukraine’s parliament and if he removed Klitschko as town mayor, it would mean he could put an ally in charge of the capital. And in July 2019, the Ukrainian president called for Klitschko to lose some of his powers.

At the time, Klitschko accused Zelensky’s government of trying to ‘eliminate me and appoint a person who was not chosen by Kyiv residents’. 

According to the law, Kyiv’s elected mayor must also carry out the administrative role, Klitschko said at the time, accusing Zelensky of wanting to establish ‘direct presidential rule’ in the capital. 

The renewed political spat comes as Ukrainian forces in Kyiv said on Friday they shot down more than 30 Russian missiles and drones overnight and two people were injured by falling debris, before authorities lifted air raid alerts across most of the country.

Russia has launched about 20 separate missiles and drone strikes against Ukrainian cities since the beginning of May.

Kyiv military authorities, writing on Telegram, said Russia had launched drones and cruise missiles at the same time.

‘According to preliminary information, more than 30 air targets of various types were detected and destroyed in the airspace over and around Kyiv by air defence forces,’ they said in a statement.

Klitschko, who earlier reported two separate waves of attacks, wrote on Telegram that there had been no calls for rescue services.

Ukraine’s military said Russia had launched 15 missiles and 18 drones.

Kyiv region authorities said two people were injured as a result of falling debris, including a child.

‘In addition, the falling debris damaged five private houses,’ the state administration said on the Telegram messaging service.

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Russian drones have continued to rain down on Ukraine, ravaging the country by killing civilians and destroying buildings.

The Kremlin’s ‘kamikaze’ suicide drones, laden with explosives, have become a terrifying feature of daily life for Ukrainians.

These drones – often small in size a cheap in comparison to other similar weapons – have become an integral part of Russia‘s war tactics, and one model in particular is wreaking havoc.

In an attack on Tuesday, Iranian-supplied Shahed-136 UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) were shot down from the sky over Kyiv in successive waves of 31 strikes, Ukraine’s armed forces said. Although Ukraine’s air defenses said they were able to shoot down 29, Russia’s drones have shown no relent.

While Ukrainian forces have been using sophisticated drones, such as the US-made Predator, the Shahed-136 has proved itself to be a crude but effective weapon.  

The Shaheds, which Russia has rebranded as Geran-2 , have a range of more than 600 miles and can ‘loiter’ above potential targets for hours before being slammed  into enemy soldiers, vehicles or buildings and exploding on impact.

Iran previously denied providing Russia with weapons, before admitting late last year to sending ‘a small number of drones months before the Ukraine war’ to Moscow.

The drones have been repeatedly used by Russia throughout the conflict, targeting urban centers and power stations.

They are comparatively cheap, costing in the region of £16,000.

Their use in swarms presented a major challenge to Ukrainian air defenses earlier in the war

And although Western nations have since bolstered the Ukrainian air defenses with anti-missile systems, the country is still in the grip of the relentlessness attacks.

Ukrainians who have witnessed drone strikes say they make a highly distinctive noise, like ‘motorbikes’ in the air, while some soldiers have taken to calling the drones ‘the flying lawnmower’.

The general staff of the armed forces of Ukraine released a video in October last year showing a smoking wreckage, claiming it to be one of the drones. The post said it had been shot down by a machine gun.

‘This is a primitive handmade product,’ Yuriy Ignat, a spokesman for the Ukrainian Air Force, told Radio Free Europe after the attack last year.

‘It’s not a high-tech conveyor-belt production like the [Turkish-made] Bayraktar or American and Israeli [unmanned aerial vehicles],’ he added.

Ukrainian residents described the drone attacks to RFE. ‘You can hear the roar. First, I just hear them, but then I saw one fly by and then explode,’ one man said.

Another said: ‘There was a buzz that woke me up. I remember thinking: “What’s that?” The sound was approaching and then there was an explosion near the house.’

According to reports, the first recorded use of the drones was in Yemen. Now, Iran is reported to have sold hundreds of the drones to Russia.

Packed with explosives, the Shahed UAVs can be pre-programmed with the GPS coordinates of a target. They are known as suicide drones because they nosedive and explode on impact like a missile and are destroyed in the process. 

The Shahed 136 is almost 12ft long with a 4ft wingspan in a delta, or triangular shape. The explosives are contained in the nose of the drone, as well as the technology that guides it to its targets for a precision strike. 

The engine is found at the rear and drives two bladed propellers. It has been compared to an engine one would find on a lawnmower or a moped.

According to Iranian data, the UAV’s range is about 1,000km (621 miles), but drone expert Samuel Bendett with the CNA think-tank told MailOnline that the Shahed is being used in Ukraine at much shorter ranges. That’s because its GPS guidance system – which is vulnerable to jamming – isn’t very robust.

In order to overwhelm air defences, several of the drones – generally batches of five or more – are launched at once from the same rack. They can be fired in quick succession from a rocket launcher mounted on a truck.

The rocket is jettisoned on take-off and the engine takes over once it is airborne. An almost horizontal launch allows the drones to fly low and slow, and so avoid radar detective more effectively. 

Iranians are known to have controlled Shaheds via radio. Whether Russia is capable of the same in Ukraine is unclear, though Ukrainians have reported seeing the drones change direction, suggesting at least some remote control.

Using Shaheds allows Russia to avoid putting sophisticated aircraft and pilots at risk and save its limited stock of expensive long-range precision missiles.

Russia has managed to use the Shahed drones to effectively saturate targets, whether a fuel depot or infrastructure and utilities like power or water stations. They have done so by using them alongside intelligence drones.

But Ukraine has said they have managed to shoot down a vast majority of the drones – more than 80 per cent – by using machine guns and portable anti-air missiles.

As the conflict essentially becomes one of attrition, Russia’s success in finding cheaper but still potent weapons will continue to be a major advantage.

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Published: 06:01 EDT, 24 May 2023 | Updated: 19:54 EDT, 24 May 2023