Russia has unleashed a barrage of missile upon cities in Ukraine early on Thursday, targeting energy infrastructure facilities, Ukrainian officials and media said. Ukrainian officials said residential buildings were hit but did not immediately say if there were casualties.
According to a message posted by Dame Melinda Simmons, the British Ambassador to Ukraine, people in Kyiv woke up on Thursday morning to explosions and shaking windows. "This is nowhere near over, and Ukraine continues to have no choice but to push Russia back to its borders," she stated. "Air raid sirens wailed for hours across Ukraine, including the capital, Kyiv, where residents were jolted out of bed by explosions."
It was not immediately clear how many missiles had been launched at targets in Kyiv, or whether the sounds were missiles being intercepted by defence systems activated in the country. Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said explosions were reported in the city’s Holosiivskyi district and emergency services were heading there.
In eastern Ukraine, 15 missiles struck Kharkiv and the outlying northeastern region, hitting residential buildings, according to Kharkiv Governor Oleh Syniehubov. He said he would shortly release more details about the scale of the damage or any casualties in Ukraine’s second-largest city.
“Objects of critical infrastructure is again in the crosshairs of the occupants,” he said in a Telegram post. Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov reported on Telegram that there were “problems with electricity” in some parts of the city.
The governor of the southern Odesa region, Maksym Marchenko, also reported strikes on Odesa, saying that energy facilities and residential buildings were being hit. “The second wave is expected right now, so I ask the residents of the region to stay in shelters!” Mr Marchenko warned.
Ukrainian Railways reported power outages in some areas and numerous trains had been delayed by the bombardment. Preventive emergency power cuts were applied in Kyiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk and Odesa regions. Mr Klitschko said 15 per cent of the capital’s energy consumers were without power due to the emergency power cuts.
More explosions were reported in the northern city of Chernihiv and the western Lviv region, as well as in the cities of Dnipro, Lutsk and Rivne. Ukrainian media also reported explosions in the western regions of Ivano-Frankivsk and Ternopil.
Russia has been hitting Ukraine with similar bombardments since October. Initially, the barrages targeting the country’s energy infrastructure took place weekly, plunging entire cities into darkness, but became more spread out in time, with commentators speculating that Moscow may be storing up its ammunition.
The last barrage of missiles occurred on February 16.
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