- Agency Report
At least six people have been killed after Russia launched a massive attack across Ukraine, seriously damaging some power and water supplies.
Explosions rang out in several cities including Kyiv on Monday morning, as more than half of the country’s regions came under attack from missiles and drones.
Authorities in Zaporizhzhia, Lutsk, Kharkiv, Zhytomyr andDnipropetrovsk regions reported people had died in the huge air raid.
Russia confirmed it had targeted Ukraine’s energy infrastructure – one of its long-term tactics – and said all its targets were hit.
The barrage of drone and missile attacks began across the country overnight on Monday and continued well into the morning.
People were urged to stay in shelters as the entire country was put under air raid alert.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia had fired more than 100 missiles and about 100 drones.
“This was one of the largest strikes,” he said, adding there was a lot of damage to energy facilities.
While the main target of this attack was energy infrastructure, it was also an attempt by Moscow to strike at Ukraine’s reserves of another key resource: morale.
Ukrainians have been electrified by the recent successful incursion of their troops deep into Russian territory in the Kursk region.
With Monday’s strikes, Russia was intending to bring ordinary people in Ukraine back down to earth with a bump – reminding them, and politicians in Western capitals, that the Kremlin still has the upper hand in this war.
The message from Moscow was make no mistake, Russia can still inflict misery on the Ukrainian population whenever it chooses.
Dozens wounded
Some 15 regions of Ukraine were targeted by Russia in the strikes, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmygal said – using weapons including drones, cruise missiles and supersonic missiles.
“There are wounded and dead,” Mr Shmyhal said on the Telegram social media app.
Dozens of people were injured, and those who died included:
- Two men – one aged 69 and another aged 47 – were killed in separate attacks in the Dnipropetrovsk region, local governor Sergiy Lysak said. Others were injured including a 14-year-old girl, he added
- A man was killed when his house was hit in Zaporizhzhia, said the area’s governor
- The mayor of Lutsk said one person had been killed when an “infrastructure facility” was hit. Five others were wounded and most parts of the city had no running water, he added
- In Izyum in Kharkiv region, a man was killed in a missile strike, the regional head said
- And in Zhytomyr region in western Ukraine, a woman died after homes and infrastructure buildings were hit by missiles, the governor said.