Reuters safety adviser Ryan Evans takes a selfie while working with a news reporting team near the border with Gaza in Be'eri, southern Israel, Feb. 8, 2024. (Ryan Evans/Reuters via AP)
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) – Russia unleashed a massive drone and missile barrage throughout Ukraine on Monday that appeared to target energy infrastructure. At least three people were reported killed.
The barrage began around midnight and continued beyond daybreak in what appeared to be Russia’s biggest attack against Ukraine in weeks.
According to Ukraine’s air force, there were multiple groups of Russian drones moving toward eastern, northern, southern, and central regions of Ukraine, followed by multiple cruise and ballistic missiles.
Explosions were heard in the capital, Kyiv. Power and water supplies in the city have been disrupted by the attack, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said.
In the wake of the barrage, the city administration announced plans to open “points of invincibility” – shelter-type places where people can charge their devices and get refreshments during energy blackouts. Such points were first opened in Ukraine in the fall of 2022, when Russia targeted the country’s energy infrastructure with weekly barrages.
Ihor Polishchuk, mayor of Ukraine’s western city of Lutsk, said a multistory residential building and an unspecified infrastructure object were hit and one person was killed.
Another person was killed in the central Dnipropetrovsk region, where the attack sparked multiple fires, damaged a dozen households and completely destroyed two, regional head Serhii Lysak said. One person was rescued from under the rubble, Lysak said.
One person was also killed in the southeastern, partially occupied region of Zaporizhzhia, regional head Ivan Fedorov said. According to Fedorov, 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 neighboring Poland, the military said Polish and NATO air defenses were activated in the eastern part of the country as a result of the attack.
In Russia, in the meantime, officials reported a Ukrainian drone attack overnight and on Monday morning.
Four people were injured in Russia’s 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, local officials said.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said that 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.
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