Ukraine was rocked by a massive Russian missile barrage

Dozens of Russian missiles were fired at Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities on Thursday in what officials described as one of the biggest daily attacks in a months-long campaign targeting the country’s energy infrastructure.

“Russia continues to resort to its missile terrorism against peaceful citizens of Ukraine,” General Valeriy Zaluzhny, Commander-in-Chief of Ukraine’s Armed Forces, said in a tweet. “This morning… 69 missiles were launched in total. 54 cruise missiles were shot down by assets of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.”

Col. Yury Ignat, a spokesman for the Ukrainian Air Force, told the Financial Times that in addition to the missiles, Russia launched at least 11 kamikaze drones over Ukraine early Thursday.

The number of casualties and extent of damage was nationwide, nearly a year in Vladimir Putin’s full scope Ukraine invasionwas not immediately apparent.

“After the night attack with kamikaze drones, the enemy is attacking Ukraine from different directions with air and sea cruise missiles from strategic aircraft and ships,” the Ukrainian Air Force Command said in a statement.

Local officials in two Russian border regions said air defenses had shot down Ukrainian targets, including drones. The attacks appear to indicate that Ukraine is continuing to attack Russian territory after a series of recent strikes on air bases deep in enemy lines, including two strikes on Engels Air Base.

In neighboring Belarus, which has allowed its ally Russia to use the country as a staging ground for attacks without joining the war itself, officials have claimed to have shot down a stray Ukrainian air defense missile. The Belarusian foreign ministry said it had summoned the Ukrainian ambassador and warned him of “serious consequences for everyone” if more missiles landed in the country.

In a video released by the state news agency Belta, Anatoly Konovalov, the military commander of the western Brest region where the Soviet-era S300 missile was reported to have fallen, said, “There is no need to worry about the population.” He likened the incident to a similar one last month when a stray Ukrainian anti-aircraft strike landed in Poland, killing two people, while Kyiv tried to hold off a Russian barrage of similar intensity on Thursday.

Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said it was ready to conduct an “objective investigation” into the incident.

Kirillo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the Zelensky administration, in one of the Telegram channels Mail It said three people were injured, including a 14-year-old girl, after a rocket hit a residential neighborhood in Kyiv’s eastern Darnitsky district, which included photos of the destruction. Tymoshenko too to publish A photo of a Russian missile that fell into a house in Ivano-Frankivsk, a regional capital in western Ukraine, but did not explode.

“Several explosions took place in the capital,” said Vitali Klitschko, the mayor of Kyiv. He urged residents to charge their phones and stock up on water “for the possibility of power outages”.

“90 percent of the city is without electricity,” said Andrey Sadovyiyi, the mayor of Lviv, the largest regional capital in western Ukraine where explosions were also heard, adding that the water supply could be disrupted.

Explosions have been reported in several Ukrainian towns and cities, some close to the front line, including Odessa on the Black Sea and Kharkiv, the largest city in eastern Ukraine.

Russian missile and kamikaze drone strikes on Ukraine’s power grid and heating infrastructure have caused power and heating outages for hours and days in recent months. Moscow launched the campaign this fall after counterattacks drove Russian forces out of swathes of eastern and southern Ukraine, where Moscow still controls roughly 20 percent of Ukrainian territory.

Klitschko said the air force shot down 16 missiles over the capital.

Thursday’s attack comes days after US President Joe Biden said he had agreed to provide one Patriot missile battery, Kyiv, to be delivered in the coming months. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky months ago called on the United States and European countries to bolster Ukraine’s air defenses, which mostly rely on depleted Soviet-era equipment, with more advanced air defense systems.

Kyiv has received a few mid-range systems including the Iris-T system from Germany, Nasams from the United States and Norway, as well as Hawks from Spain.

After Thursday’s attacks, Mykhailo Podolak, an adviser to the Zelensky administration, criticized Western leaders who urged Kyiv to engage in peace talks, adding that the strikes showed that Russia, despite recent public calls by Putin for negotiations, cares more about peace than 10. After Months of launching a comprehensive invasion.

Podolyak added: “We are waiting for further proposals from the” peacekeepers “on” a peaceful settlement and “security guarantees for the Russian Federation and the lack of desire for provocations.”

Additional reporting by Max Seddon in Riga