A minimum of six individuals have been killed after Russia launched a large assault throughout Ukraine, critically damaging some energy and water provides.
Explosions rang out in a number of cities together with Kyiv on Monday morning, as greater than half of the nation’s areas got here below assault from missiles and drones.
Authorities in Zaporizhzhia, Lutsk, Kharkiv, Zhytomyr and Dnipropetrovsk areas reported individuals had died within the big air raid.
Russia confirmed it had focused Ukraine’s vitality infrastructure – one in all its long-term ways – and mentioned all its targets had been hit.
The barrage of drone and missile assaults started throughout the nation in a single day on Monday and continued effectively into the morning.
Folks had been urged to remain in shelters as the whole nation was put below air raid alert.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky mentioned Russia had fired greater than 100 missiles and about 100 drones.
“This was one of many largest strikes,” he mentioned, including there was numerous injury to vitality services.
Whereas the primary goal of this assault was vitality infrastructure, it was additionally an try by Moscow to strike at Ukraine’s reserves of one other key useful resource: morale.
Ukrainians have been electrified by the current profitable incursion of their troops deep into Russian territory within the Kursk area.
With Monday’s strikes, Russia was desiring to deliver strange individuals in Ukraine again all the way down to earth with a bump – reminding them, and politicians in Western capitals, that the Kremlin nonetheless has the higher hand on this warfare.
The message from Moscow was make no mistake, Russia can nonetheless inflict distress on the Ukrainian inhabitants each time it chooses.
Dozens wounded
Some 15 areas of Ukraine had been focused by Russia within the strikes, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmygal mentioned – utilizing weapons together with drones, cruise missiles and supersonic missiles.
“There are wounded and useless,” Mr Shmyhal mentioned on the Telegram social media app.
Dozens of individuals had been injured, and people who died included:
- Two males – one aged 69 and one other aged 47 – had been killed in separate assaults within the Dnipropetrovsk area, native governor Sergiy Lysak mentioned. Others had been injured together with a 14-year-old woman, he added
- A person was killed when his home was hit in Zaporizhzhia, mentioned the world’s governor
- The mayor of Lutsk mentioned one particular person had been killed when an “infrastructure facility” was hit. 5 others had been wounded and most elements of town had no operating water, he added
- In Izyum in Kharkiv area, a person was killed in a missile strike, the regional head mentioned
- And in Zhytomyr area in western Ukraine, a girl died after houses and infrastructure buildings had been hit by missiles, the governor mentioned.
The assaults brought on critical injury to infrastructure, with energy outages reported in lots of cities – together with Kyiv – and water provides disrupted.
Emergency blackouts had been imposed, vitality firm DTEK warned, including that its engineers had been working to return electrical energy provides throughout the nation.
Russia has been focusing on Ukraine’s vitality infrastructure since early on in its full-scale invasion, which started in February 2022.
In current months it has renewed its marketing campaign of assaults on the ability grid, inflicting frequent blackouts throughout the nation.
In June, President Zelensky mentioned Russia had destroyed half of his nation’s electricity-generating capability because it started pummelling its vitality services in late March.
Ukraine is shopping for vitality from the European Union. Nevertheless, this isn’t sufficient and so most days, the nation has a deliberate nationwide blackout to guard vital wants similar to hospitals and navy websites.
Russia’s defence ministry mentioned it attacked electrical energy and fuel services, in addition to websites storing Western weapons.
“All designated targets had been hit, leading to energy outages and disrupted rail transport of weapons and ammunition to the entrance line,” it mentioned.
EPAIt has been a yr of dangerous information on the battlefield for Kyiv, with Russia gaining floor steadily within the jap Donbas area.
There have been issues with mobilisation and stories that Ukraine is operating out of males.
However following Ukraine’s shock incursion into Kursk, the movies of troopers hoisting the Ukrainian flag over Russian villages that they had seized gave a badly-needed enhance to Ukrainian morale.
And it confirmed the West that Kyiv continues to be able to finishing up advanced, daring and – most significantly – profitable offensives.
On Monday, Mr Zelensky referred to as on Western allies together with Britain, America and France to vary their guidelines and let Ukraine use their weapons to strike deeper inside Russia.
Ukraine is allowed to make use of some Western weapons to hit targets inside Russia – however not long-range weapons.
And he mentioned “we may do way more to guard lives” if European air forces labored with Ukraine’s air defence.
Additionally on Monday, Ukraine tried to assault an oil refinery in Yaroslavl, a metropolis north-east of Moscow, in line with the regional governor. No casualties or injury have been reported.
And Russia’s defence ministry mentioned it had destroyed 9 drones over its Saratov area, which is 560 miles (900km) from the Ukrainian border.