KYIV: Russia launched one of its largest missile and drone attacks in weeks on Ukraine on Monday, killing at least four people and severely damaging the country’s already weakened energy infrastructure, triggering blackouts and disrupting rail services, officials said.
The strikes come as Ukrainian forces intensify their counteroffensive in Russia’s Kursk region, where they have been engaged in fierce battles for nearly three weeks. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed the scale of the damage in a video message on Telegram, stating, “There is a lot of damage in the energy sector. Restoration work is already underway.”
State-owned electricity provider Ukrenergo announced emergency power cuts to stabilize the energy grid following the assault. The attacks caused widespread disruptions, including delays in train services as explosions echoed through the capital, Kyiv. Air defences were active in the early hours of Monday, with explosions heard as residents scrambled to take shelter in metro stations.
“We are always worried. We have been under stress for almost three years now,” said Yulia Voloshyna, a 34-year-old lawyer taking refuge in the Kyiv metro. “It was very scary, to be honest. You don’t know what to expect,” she added.
The Russian Defense Ministry claimed responsibility for the strikes, stating that the attacks targeted energy infrastructure supporting Ukraine’s defence industry. Since the invasion began in February 2022, Russia has repeatedly launched large-scale drone and missile attacks on Ukrainian territory, often focusing on critical energy facilities.
The deadly barrage claimed lives across several regions. In the central Dnipropetrovsk region, a 69-year-old man was killed by Russian bombardment, while another fatality was reported in the southern Zaporizhzhia region due to missile strikes.
Furthermore, in the central Zhytomyr region, one person was killed, and several others were wounded in a combination of missile and drone attacks. The western city of Lutsk also suffered significant damage when Russian bombardments hit an apartment building and an infrastructure facility, resulting in one death and five injuries, according to Mayor Igor Polishchuk.
In the northern Sumy region, Russia targeted railway infrastructure, injuring one person and damaging several buildings. Ukrainian Railways reported that some stations, left without power due to the citywide outage, were switched to backup generators.
President Zelensky said that more than 100 missiles and approximately 100 attack drones were used in the assault. He reiterated his call for European air forces to assist Ukraine in defending against such attacks. “In our various regions of Ukraine, we could do much more to protect lives if the aviation of our European neighbours worked together with our F-16s and together with our air defence,” Zelensky said in a social media post.
Andriy Yermak, Zelensky’s chief of staff, emphasized the need for permission to strike “deep into the territory of Russia with Western weapons” in response to the attack.
The aerial assault followed the death of Ryan Evans, a safety advisor for the Reuters news agency, who was killed in a missile strike on a hotel in Kramatorsk in eastern Ukraine on Saturday. Six Reuters crew members were staying at the hotel, located in the last major city under Ukrainian control in the Donetsk region.
The Kremlin has maintained that its strikes are aimed at military infrastructure or related targets, with spokesman Dmitry Peskov stating, “I will say it again. The strikes are against military infrastructure targets or targets related to military infrastructure.”
On Sunday, President Zelensky separately announced that Ukrainian forces were advancing in the Russian region of Kursk, more than two weeks after Kyiv’s surprise incursion
