A tractor clears the rubble after a Russian attack on the Sapphire hotel in Kramatorsk, Donetsk region, Ukraine, Sunday, Aug. 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
By ILLIA NOVIKOV
KIEV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia bombed large parts of Ukraine on Monday, firing dozens of missiles and drones, killing four people, wounding more than a dozen and damaging energy facilities. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the attacks “heinous.”
The barrage, which involved more than 100 missiles and a similar number of drones, began around midnight and continued until dawn, in what appears to be Russia’s largest attack in weeks.
The Ukrainian Air Force said swarms of Russian drones fired at the eastern, northern, southern and central regions were followed by salvos of cruise and ballistic missiles.
“Like most Russian attacks before it, this one was just as heinous and targeted critical civilian infrastructure,” Zelensky said, adding that most of the country was affected – from the Kharkiv region and Kyiv to Odessa and the west.
Explosions were heard in the capital Kiev. The attack cut off the city’s electricity and water supplies, said Mayor Vitali Klitschko.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said Russia had fired drones, cruise missiles and Kinzhal hypersonic missiles at 15 Ukrainian regions – more than half the country.
“The energy infrastructure has once again become a target of Russian terrorists,” Shmyhal said, adding that state-owned power grid operator Ukrenergo had been forced to implement an emergency power shutdown to stabilize the system.
He called on Ukraine’s allies to supply the country with long-range weapons and allow their use against targets inside Russia.
“To stop the barbaric shelling of Ukrainian cities, it is necessary to destroy the place from which the Russian missiles are fired,” Shmyhal said. “We are counting on the support of our allies and will definitely make Russia pay for it.”
US President Joe Biden called the Russian attack on energy infrastructure “outrageous” and said he had “reprioritized US air defense exports to go to Ukraine first.” He also said the US would “supply energy equipment to Ukraine to repair its systems and strengthen the resilience of Ukraine’s energy grid.”
The Russian Defense Ministry said the attacks involved the use of “air- and sea-based long-range precision weapons and drones against critical energy infrastructure facilities that support the operation of Ukraine’s military-industrial complex. All intended targets were hit.”
At least four people were killed – one in the western city of Lutsk, one in the central Dnipropetrovsk region, one in Zhytomyr in the center of the country and one in the partially occupied Zaporizhia region in the southeast, local authorities said. Thirteen others were injured – one in the Kyiv region surrounding the capital, five in Lutsk, three in the southern Mykolaiv region and four in the neighboring Odessa region.
Power outages and damage to civil infrastructure and residential buildings were reported in the Sumy region in the east, the Mykolaiv and Odessa regions in the south, and the Rivne region in the west.
In Sumy, a province in the east bordering Russia, local authorities said 194 settlements had lost power and 19 others had experienced partial blackouts.
Private energy company DTEK imposed emergency power cuts and said in a statement that “energy workers across the country are working around the clock to restore lighting in Ukrainians’ homes.”
Following the barrage and blackouts, authorities across Ukraine were ordered to open “safety points” – shelters where people can charge their phones and other devices and refresh themselves during the blackout, Shmyhal said. Such points were first opened in the fall of 2022, when Russia attacked Ukraine’s energy infrastructure with weekly barrages.
In neighboring Poland, the military said that as a result of the attack, Polish and NATO air defenses had been activated in the eastern part of the country.
Meanwhile, officials in Russia reported a Ukrainian drone attack overnight.
In the central Saratov region, four people were injured when drones struck residential buildings in two cities. One drone hit a residential high-rise in the city of Saratov and another hit a residential building in the city of Engels, home to a military airport that had been attacked earlier, local officials said.
The Russian Defense Ministry said that during the night and morning a total of 22 Ukrainian drones were intercepted in eight provinces, including the Saratov and Yaroslavl regions in central Russia.
Russia also announced that its troops had repelled Ukrainian attempts to advance on half a dozen settlements in the Kursk region, where Ukraine launched an incursion on August 6 that caught Russia off guard.
Fighting in the region has raised concerns about the nuclear power plant there. Rafael Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said he would visit the plant on Tuesday.
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