Russia launched another large-scale attack on Ukraine overnight on Tuesday targeting its energy grid and killing at least four people.
The attack — the second major barrage in just four days — consisted of almost 300 drones, 18 ballistic missiles and seven cruise missiles, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote on X.
“Once again, the main target of the strike was our energy,” Zelenskyy wrote, adding that there was also “extensive destruction of residential and civilian infrastructure. Dnipro, Zhytomyr, Zaporizhzhia, Kyiv, Odesa, Sumy, Kharkiv and Donetsk regions came under attack.”
In recent months, Russia has ramped up its attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, cutting power and heating in the height of winter.
Ukraine’s largest energy provider, DTEK, said Russia had struck one of its power plants, adding it was the eighth such attack since October.
In Kharkiv, at least four people died and six were injured, Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said on Tuesday. The aerial attack struck a suburb of the city, targeting a mail depot. Thirty people were rescued, including two who were pulled from the rubble.
Five more people were wounded in a Russian strike on Ukraine’s port city of Odesa, which was hit by two waves of attacks overnight.
The shelling largely damaged civilian infrastructure in central Odesa and surrounding areas, hitting residential buildings, a medical facility, a kindergarten, a school and a fitness centre.
In the Kyiv region, several hundred thousand households were left without power, Zelenskyy said.
The massive drone and missile attack comes just four days after Moscow used an advanced hypersonic missile for only the second time in its all-out war against Ukraine, now nearing its four-year mark.
The use of Oreshnik sparked condemnation from Kyiv’s allies, including Washington, which called it a “dangerous and inexplicable escalation of this war”.
Moscow on Monday said the missile hit an aviation repair factory in the Lviv region and that it was fired in response to Ukraine’s attempt to strike one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s residences — a claim Kyiv denies and that Washington has said it does not believe happened.
Additional sources • AP, AFP