Russia has carried out one of the largest air strikes on Ukraine so far in the war, the head of Ukraine’s air force said.
At least six people were killed and dozens injured when missiles and drones were fired at more than half of Ukraine’s regions on Monday.
The electrical infrastructure was hit and there were widespread power outages. The entire country was put on air raid alert and told to take cover.
Russia confirmed it had carried out attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure – one of the country’s long-term tactics – and said all targets had been hit.
The barrage of missile and drone attacks began across the country on Monday night and continued into the morning.
According to Mykola Oleshchuk, the commander of the Ukrainian air force, Russia launched 127 missiles and 109 attack drones. Of those, Ukraine shot down 102 missiles and 99 drones, he said on Telegram.
Mr Oleshchuk called the combined attack “the most massive airstrike”.
Earlier, an attack last December when 158 missiles and drones were fired at Ukraine, it was considered the largest attack to date.
While the main target of this attack was energy infrastructure, it was also an attempt by Moscow to attack Ukraine’s reserves of another key resource: morale.
Ukrainians are shocked by the recent successful incursion of their troops deep into Russian territory in the Kursk region.
With Monday’s attacks, Russia wanted to bring ordinary people in Ukraine back to reality and remind them and politicians in Western capitals that the Kremlin still has the upper hand in this war.
The message from Moscow was: make no mistake, Russia can still inflict misery on the Ukrainian people if it so chooses.
Dozens injured
According to Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmygal, about 15 regions in Ukraine were attacked by Russia, using drones, cruise missiles and supersonic missiles, among other weapons.
“There are injuries and deaths,” Mr Shmyhal said on the social media app Telegram.
Dozens of people were injured and the dead included:
-
Two men – one aged 69 and one aged 47 – were killed in separate attacks in the Dnipropetrovsk region, local governor Sergiy Lysak said. Others were wounded, including a 14-year-old girl, he added
-
A man was killed when his home in Zaporizhia was hit, the region’s governor said
-
The mayor of Lutsk said one person had been killed when an “infrastructure facility” was hit. Five others were injured and most parts of the city had no running water, he added
-
A man was killed in a rocket attack in Izyum in the Kharkiv region, the regional head said.
-
And in the Zhytomyr region of western Ukraine, a woman died after houses and infrastructure buildings were hit by rockets, the governor said.
The attacks caused serious damage to infrastructure, with power outages and water supplies disrupted in many cities, including Kiev.
One of the remaining power plants – a hydroelectric plant north of Kiev – was one of the last targets, and damage assessments are still ongoing.
Russia has been targeting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure since the start of the large-scale invasion, which began in February 2022.
In recent months, the organization has renewed its attacks on the electricity grid, leading to frequent power outages across the country.
In June, President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia has destroyed half of its electricity generation capacity since the country began destroying its energy facilities in late March.
Ukraine buys energy from the European Union, but this is not enough, and so the country has a planned nationwide blackout most days to protect critical needs such as hospitals and military sites.
The Russian Defense Ministry said it had attacked electricity and gas facilities, as well as sites where Western weapons were stored.
“All designated targets were hit, leading to power outages and disruption of rail transport of weapons and ammunition to the front line,” the report said.
It has been a year of bad news on the battlefield for Kiev, while Russia has steadily gained ground in the eastern Donbas region.
There have been problems with mobilization and there are reports that Ukraine is short of troops.
But after Ukraine’s surprise invasion of Kursk, videos of soldiers raising the Ukrainian flag over the Russian villages they had captured gave Ukrainian morale a much-needed boost.
And it showed the West that Kiev is still capable of carrying out complex, bold and – most importantly – successful offensives.
On Monday, Zelensky called on Western allies, including Britain, America and France, to change their rules and let Ukraine use their weapons to strike deeper into Russia.
Ukraine may use some Western weapons to hit targets in Russia – but no long-range weapons.
And he said: “We could do much more to protect lives” if European air forces cooperated with Ukrainian air defence.
Also on Monday, Ukraine attempted to attack an oil refinery in Yaroslavl, a city northeast of Moscow, the regional governor said. No casualties or damage were reported.
And the Russian Defense Ministry reported that it had destroyed nine drones over the Saratov region, which is 900 kilometers from the Ukrainian border.
