Russia battered much of Ukraine on Monday, firing scores of missiles and drones that killed four people, injured more than a dozen and damaged energy facilities in attacks that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy described as “vile.”
The barrage of over 100 missiles and a similar number of drones began around midnight and continued beyond daybreak in what appeared to be Russia’s biggest onslaught in weeks.
Ukraine’s air force said swarms of Russian drones fired at eastern, northern, southern and central regions were followed by volleys of cruise and ballistic missiles.
“Like most previous Russian strikes, this one was just as vile, targeting critical civilian infrastructure,” Zelenskyy said, adding that most of the country was targeted — from the Kharkiv region and Kyiv to Odesa and the west.
Explosions were heard in the capital of Kyiv. Power and water supplies in the city were disrupted by the attack, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said.
Ukraine’s Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said Russia fired drones, cruise missiles and hypersonic ballistic Kinzhal missiles at 15 Ukrainian regions — more than half the country.
“The energy infrastructure has once again become the target of Russian terrorists. Unfortunately, there is damage in a number of regions,” Shmyhal said, adding that the state-owned power grid operator, Ukrenergo, has been forced to implement emergency power cuts to stabilize the system.
He urged Ukraine’s allies to provide it with long-range weapons and permission to use them on targets inside Russia.
“In order to stop the barbaric shelling of Ukrainian cities, it is necessary to destroy the place from which the Russian missiles are launched,” Shmyhal said. “We count on the support of our allies and will definitely make Russia pay.”
U.S. President Joe Biden called the Russian attack on energy infrastructure “outrageous” and said he had “re-prioritized U.S. air defence exports so they are sent to Ukraine first.” He also said the U.S. was “surging energy equipment to Ukraine to repair its systems and strengthen the resilience of Ukraine’s energy grid.”
The Russian Defence Ministry said the attacks used “long-range precision air- and sea-based weapons and strike drones against critical energy infrastructure facilities that support the operation of Ukraine’s military-industrial complex. All designated targets were hit.”
Blackouts in several locations
At least four people were killed — one in the western city of Lutsk, one in the central Dnipropetrovsk region, one in Zhytomyr in the country’s centre and one in the partially occupied Zaporizhzhia region in the southeast — according to local officials. Thirteen others were wounded — one in the Kyiv region that surrounds the Ukrainian capital, five in Lutsk, three in the southern Mykolaiv region and four in the neighbouring Odesa region.
Blackouts and damage to civilian infrastructure and residential buildings were reported across the country, from the region of Sumy in the east, to the Mykolaiv and Odesa regions in the south, to the region of Rivne in the west.
In Sumy, a province in the east that borders Russia, local administration said that 194 settlements lost power, while 19 others had a partial blackout. The private energy company DTEK introduced emergency blackouts, saying in a statement that “energy workers throughout the country work 24/7 to restore light in the homes of Ukrainians.”
In the wake of the barrage and the power cuts, regional officials all across Ukraine were ordered to open “points of invincibility” — shelter-type places where people can charge their devices and get refreshments during energy blackouts, Shmyhal said.
Such points were first opened in Ukraine in the fall of 2022, when Russia targeted the country’s energy infrastructure with weekly barrages.
In neighbouring Poland, the military said Polish and NATO air defences were activated in the eastern part of the country as a result of the attack.
Russia promises response to Kursk incursion
In Russia, officials reported a Ukrainian drone attack overnight. Four people were injured in the central region of Saratov, where drones hit residential buildings in two cities.
One drone struck a residential high-rise in the city of Saratov, and another hit a residential building in the city of Engels, home to a military airfield that had been attacked before, local officials said.
Russia’s Defence Ministry said that a total of 22 Ukrainian drones were intercepted overnight and in the morning over eight Russian regions, including the Saratov and Yaroslavl regions in central Russia.
Russia also said its troops had fended off Ukrainian attempts to advance on half a dozen settlements in the Kursk region, where Ukraine launched an incursion on Aug. 6 that caught Russia off guard.
The fighting in the Kursk region has raised concerns about the nuclear energy plant there. International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Grossi said he would visit the plant on Tuesday.
