Kyiv, Ucrania (AP) – Russia attacks large parts of Ukraine On Monday, Ukraine launched dozens of missiles and drones, killing four people, wounding more than a dozen and damaging energy facilities in attacks that President Volodymyr Zelensky described as “sinister.”
The bombardment, which included more than 100 missiles and a similar number of drones, began around midnight and continued until dawn in what appeared to be the biggest Russian attack in weeks.
Ukraine’s Air Force said swarms of Russian drones fired on eastern, northern, southern and central regions, followed by salvos of cruise missiles and ballistic missiles.
“Like most previous Russian attacks, this one was equally vicious and targeted vital civilian infrastructure,” Zelensky said, adding that most of the country was targeted, from the Kharkiv region and kyiv to Odessa and the west.
Explosions were heard in the capital, kyiv. The city’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, said the city’s electricity and water supply had been disrupted due to the attack.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Denis Shmyhal He said Russia had launched drones, cruise missiles and Kinzhal hypersonic ballistic missiles in 15 regions of Ukraine, more than half the country.
“Energy infrastructure has once again become the target of Russian terrorists,” Shmyhal said, adding that state-owned power grid operator Ukrinergo had to implement emergency power cuts to stabilise the system.
He urged Ukraine’s allies to supply it. Long range weapons And permission to use it against targets inside Russia.
“To stop the barbaric shelling of Ukrainian cities, it is necessary to destroy the place from which Russian missiles are launched,” Shmyhal said. “We rely on the support of our allies and we will certainly make Russia pay the price.”
US President Joe Biden called the Russian attack on energy infrastructure “outrageous” and said he had “retrioritized US air defense exports to go to Ukraine first.” He added that the US “is sending energy equipment to Ukraine to repair its systems and improve the resilience of Ukraine’s energy grid.”
The Russian Defense Ministry said the strikes used “long-range precision-guided weapons from the air, sea and drones against critical energy infrastructure facilities supporting the operation of Ukraine’s military-industrial complex. All identified targets were hit.”
Local officials said at least four people were killed: one in the western city of Lutsk, one in the central region of Dnepropetrovsk, one in Zhytomir in the centre of the country and one in the partially occupied Zaporizhia region in the southeast. Thirteen other people were wounded: one in the Kiev region surrounding the capital, five in Lutsk, three in the southern region of Mykolaiv and four in the neighbouring Odessa region.
Power outages and damage to civil infrastructure and residential buildings were reported from the Sumy region in the east, to the Mykolaiv and Odessa regions in the south and to the Rivne region in the west.
In Sumy, a province in the east of the country on the border with Russia, the local administration said 194 villages had no electricity, while another 19 villages suffered partial power outages.
Private energy company D-Tech announced emergency power outages, saying in a statement that “energy sector workers across the country are working 24/7 to restore light to Ukrainian homes.”
In the wake of the shelling and power outages, officials across Ukraine were ordered to open “invincibility points” — shelter-like locations where people can charge their phones and other devices and get snacks during power outages, Shmyhal said. These points were first opened in the fall of 2022, when Russia targeted Ukraine’s energy infrastructure with weekly bombings.
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.
Meanwhile, officials in Russia reported a Ukrainian drone attack overnight.
Four people were injured in the central Russian region of Saratov when drones attacked residential buildings in two towns. Local authorities said one drone hit a residential tower in the city of Saratov, and another hit an apartment building in the town of Engels, which is home to a military airport that had been previously attacked.
A total of 22 Ukrainian drones were intercepted overnight and morning in eight provinces, including the Saratov and Yaroslavl regions in central Russia, the Russian Defense Ministry said.
Russia also said its forces repelled Ukrainian attempts to advance toward half a dozen settlements in the Kursk region, where Ukraine launched an incursion On August 6, a missile attack took Russia by surprise.
The ongoing battles in the region have raised concerns about the nuclear power plant there. The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, said he would visit the station on Tuesday.
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