Central Kyiv was rocked by explosions on Monday as Ukrainian air defences intercepted incoming Russian missiles and drones during a huge aerial bombardment of targets across the country.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Russia had launched 127 cruise and ballistic missiles and 109 attack drones, which were aimed at cities and critical infrastructure in all corners of the country. The attack began around midnight and continued into the morning.
“The enemy is terrorising the whole of Ukraine with missiles again. The energy sector is in the crosshairs,” energy minister German Galushchenko wrote on Facebook.
Russia’s defence ministry confirmed it had launched a “massive precision-guided weapons strike on critical energy infrastructure facilities” in Ukraine.
Serhiy Popko, head of Kyiv’s regional military administration, urged residents of the Ukrainian capital to remain in bomb shelters until the air raid alert was lifted.
“Energy workers are working to restore the lights. Keep calm and stay in shelters until the air-raid alarm goes off,” the Kyiv city administration told residents. Water supply was also interrupted in some districts.
The strikes also caused serious damage to the Kyiv hydroelectric power plant, hitting its machine room, according to Ukrainian news agency Unian. It shared a video that showed a section of the motorway over the dam strewn with rubble and partially aflame.
Explosions were reported by authorities in at least 15 regions, with civilian deaths reported in the western city of Lutsk and south-eastern Dnipro.
Moscow has been targeting Ukrainian energy facilities, leading to rolling blackouts across the country. The attacks have taken out more than 9GW of the country’s power generation capacity, equal to about half of what the peak energy consumption was last winter.
Ukraine’s largest private energy supplier DTEK said on Monday that it and all providers had been ordered by Ukraine’s national transmission system operator to impose emergency blackouts across the country.
The city of Zhytomyr, with a population of about 250,000, was left without power and water after the region’s utility company ordered an emergency suspension following the attacks, according to local news outlets.
Ukraine had been anticipating a new wave of aerial attacks in recent days, with the US embassy last week warning of “an increased risk of both night-time and daytime Russian drone and missile attacks throughout Ukraine in connection with Ukraine’s Independence Day on August 24″.
Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine’s foreign minister, wrote on X that the Russian aggression “must be strongly condemned and met with tangible action by the international community”.
In particular, he called on Kyiv’s partners to lift restrictions on the use of long-range, western-provided weapons to strike “legitimate military targets on Russian territory”.
Ukraine has pleaded with the UK, US and France to be able to use Storm Shadow, Scalp and Atacms missiles against Moscow’s army inside Russia, but so far these countries have maintained their position that the weapons should be used only inside the borders of Ukraine.
“America, Britain and France, other partners have the power” to stop Russia’s aerial attacks, Zelenskyy said.
Mr Kuleba also called on western allies to use their air defence capabilities to shoot down missiles and drones close to their airspace.
Polish foreign minister Radosław Sikorski has said Warsaw is weighing the idea but that it would require sign-off by Nato, which the alliance has been hesitant about doing.
The attacks come as Ukraine’s own ground forces expanded their incursion into Russia’s western Kursk region, which began on August 6th.
Kyiv’s troops have captured more than 1,200 sq km of Russian territory during their operation, and taken captive hundreds of soldiers, including young conscripts. Moscow and Kyiv exchanged 115 prisoners each over the weekend.
Ukrainian long-range drones struck two buildings in southern Russia on Monday, apparently aiming for a nearby military airbase. A video showed a drone exploding into the side of an apartment block in the city of Saratov at dawn. Four people were injured, the state Ria news agency said.
A drone also damaged a residential building in the city of Engels and drones were reportedly shot down in several other Russian regions, mostly bordering Ukraine. The Russian defence ministry claimed to have intercepted 20 drones overnight.
– Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2024