A Ukrainian sapper inspects a destroyed building during the demining of a residential area in Novoselivka, Donetsk region, Ukraine, Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2022. (AP Photo/Andriy Andriyenko)
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) – Russian strikes hit Ukraine’s southern Odesa region and the city of Dnipro for the first time in weeks on Thursday morning, and air raid sirens sounded all across the country amid fears that Moscow unleashed another large-scale missile attack.
An infrastructure target was hit on the Odesa region, Gov. Maksym Marchenko said on Telegram, warning about the threat of a “massive missile barrage on the entire territory of Ukraine.”
Multiple explosions were also reported in Dnipro, where two infrastructure objects were damaged and at least one person was wounded, according to the deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential office, Kyrylo Tymoshenko.
Air defense systems were operating in the central Kyiv region, Gov. Oleksiy Kuleba said. Officials in the Poltava, Kharkiv, Khmelnytskyi and Rivne regions urged residents to stay in bomb shelters amid the persisting threat of missile strikes.
Thursday’s blast follows the huge barrage of Russian strikes on Tuesday, the biggest attack to date on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure that also resulted in a missile hitting Poland.
Russia has increasingly resorted to targeting Ukraine’s power grid as winter approaches as its battlefield losses mount. The most recent barrage followed days of euphoria in Ukraine sparked by one of its biggest military successes – the retaking last week of the southern city of Kherson.
The head of Ukraine’s presidential office, Andriy Yermak, called the strikes on energy targets “a naive tactics of cowardly losers” in a Telegram post on Thursday.
“Ukraine has already withstood extremely difficult strikes by the enemy, which did not lead to results the Russian cowards hoped for,” Yermak wrote, urging Ukrainians not to ignore air raid sirens.
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