Ukraine’s top presidential official called on Kyiv’s allies to allow long-range attacks on Russia with western-supplied weapons after Moscow staged a large strike on Ukraine on Monday morning.
“Such a decision will accelerate the end of Russian terror,” Andriy Yermak, the president’s chief of staff, said on Telegram messenger.
Russia’s latest attack began at around midnight and continued after dawn in what appeared to be Moscow’s biggest assault against Ukraine in weeks.
According to the Ukrainian air force, there were multiple groups of Russian drones moving towards eastern, northern, southern, and central regions of Ukraine, followed by multiple cruise and ballistic missiles.
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Explosions were heard in the capital, Kyiv, and power and water supplies in the city have been disrupted, the city’s mayor, Vitalii Klitschko, said.
Another person was killed in the central Dnipropetrovsk region, where the attack sparked multiple fires, regional head Serhii Lysak said.
One person was also killed in the south-eastern, partially occupied region of Zaporizhzhia, regional head Ivan Fedorov said. He said an infrastructure facility was hit and caught fire.
In the southern Mykolaiv region, three people were injured, regional head Vitalii Kim reported. He also urged local residents to use “points of invincibility” in the region.
In the outlying Kyiv region, one person was injured in an attack that hit unspecified infrastructure objects and residential houses, regional head Ruslan Kravchenko said.
Ukraine’s private energy company, DTEK, introduced emergency blackouts, saying in an online statement that “energy workers throughout the country work 24/7 to restore light in the homes of Ukrainians.”
In neighbouring Poland, the military said Polish and Nato air defences were activated in the eastern part of the country as a result of the attack.
In Russia, officials reported a Ukrainian drone attack overnight and on Monday morning. Four people were injured in the central region of Saratov, where drones hit residential buildings in two cities.
One drone crashed into a residential high-rise in the city of Saratov, and another hit a residential building in the city of Engels, home to a military airfield that had been attacked before, officials said.
Russia’s defence ministry said a total of 22 Ukrainian drones were intercepted overnight and in the morning over eight Russian regions, including the Saratov and Yaroslavl regions in central Russia. – Reuters