Russia launches largest missile and drone attack against Ukraine

Kiev. A Russian attack on a nine-story building in the northern Ukrainian city of Sumy killed eight people and injured dozens, an official said Sunday, as Russia launched a massive drone and missile attack on Ukraine, described by the authorities as the largest in recent months.

Among the eight killed in Sumy, 40 kilometers (24 miles) from the Russian border, were two children, Ukrainian Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said. More than 400 people were evacuated from the building.

Rescuers were checking each apartment in search of people who might still be in the impacted building.

“Every life destroyed by Russia is a great tragedy,” Klymenko said.

The attack came as fears grow over Moscow’s intentions to devastate Ukraine’s power generation capacity ahead of the cold winter.

Also on Sunday, US President Joe Biden authorized for the first time the use of long-range missiles supplied by the United States to Ukraine to attack inside Russia, after intense lobbying by Ukrainian officials.

The weapons are likely to be used in response to North Korea’s decision to send thousands of troops to support Russia in the Kursk region, where Ukraine conducted a military incursion over the summer.

It is the second time that the United States has allowed the use of Western weapons within limited Russian territory after authorizing the use of HIMARS systems, a shorter-range weapon, to stop Russia’s advance in the Kharkiv region in May.

Ukraine’s first reaction to the expected US decision was remarkably restrained.

“Today, there is a lot of talk in the media about us receiving permission for relevant actions. But attacks are not made with words. These things are not announced. The missiles will speak for themselves,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said during his evening video address.

*Russia launched a total of 120 missiles and 90 drones in a large-scale attack across Ukraine, Zelenskyy said. The barrage included several types of drones, including Iranian-made Shahed models, as well as aircraft-launched cruise, ballistic and aeroballistic missiles.

Ukrainian defense forces shot down 144 of a total of 210 air targets, the Ukrainian Air Force said later on Sunday.

“The enemy’s target was our energy infrastructure throughout Ukraine. Unfortunately, there is property damage due to impacts and fallen debris. In Mykolaiv, as a result of a drone strike, two people were killed and six more were injured, including two children,” Zelenskyy said.

Two other people were killed in the Odessa region, where the attack damaged energy infrastructure and caused disruptions to power and water supplies, local governor Oleh Kiper said. Both victims were employees of the Ukrainian state power grid operator, Ukrenergo, the company reported hours later.

The combined drone and missile attack was the largest in three months, according to the head of the kyiv City Military Administration, Serhii Popko.

One person was injured after the roof of a five-story residential building caught fire in the historic center of kyiv, Popko said.

A thermoelectric plant managed by the private energy company DTEK suffered “serious damage,” according to the company.

Russian attacks have depleted Ukraine’s power generation capacity since Moscow launched a full-scale invasion of its neighbor in February 2022, leading to repeated emergency blackouts and rotating nationwide power outages. Ukrainian authorities have repeatedly urged their Western allies to strengthen the country’s air defenses to counter attacks and allow for repairs.

Explosions were heard across Ukraine on Sunday, including the capital kyiv, the major southern port of Odessa and the western and central regions of the country, according to local reports.

The operational command of the Polish armed forces wrote in X that Polish and allied aircraft, including fighter jets, had been mobilized in Polish airspace due to the “enormous” Russian attack on neighboring Ukraine. The measures were aimed at providing security in Poland’s border areas, he said.

The Russian Defense Ministry acknowledged on Sunday having carried out a “massive” missile and drone attack against “critical energy infrastructure” in Ukraine, but claimed that all the facilities attacked were linked to kyiv’s military industry.

Although Ukrainian nuclear power plants were not directly hit, several electrical substations on which they depend suffered further damage, the UN nuclear energy watchdog said in a statement on Sunday. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, only two of Ukraine’s nine operational reactors are still generating power at full capacity.

A local journalist was killed on Sunday when Ukrainian drones attacked Russia’s besieged Kursk region, its governor Aleksei Smirnov said.

Moscow’s forces have been struggling for months to dislodge Ukrainian troops from the southern province, following a daring raid in August that was the largest attack on Russia since World War II and in which battle-hardened Ukrainian units quickly took over hundreds of square kilometers of territory.

In the Russian province of Belgorod, near Ukraine, a man died instantly after a Ukrainian drone dropped explosives on his car, local governor Vyacheslav Gladkov reported.

Another Ukrainian drone attacked a drone factory in Izhevsk, deep inside Russia, on Sunday, according to anti-Kremlin Russian news channels via the Telegram messaging application. Regional leader Aleksandr Brechalov said a drone exploded near a factory in the city, shattering windows but causing no serious damage. One man was briefly hospitalized with a head injury, Brechalov added.