Russia launched a huge wave of missile strikes across Ukraine while people slept on Thursday, killing at least six civilians, knocking out electricity and forcing a nuclear power plant off the grid.
The first big volley of missile strikes since mid-February shattered the longest calm since Moscow began a campaign to attack Ukraine’s civil infrastructure five months ago.
Kyiv said it included an unprecedented six of Russia’s small arsenal of kinzhal hypersonic cruise missiles, one of Moscow’s most valuable weapons.
“The occupiers can only terrorise civilians. That’s all they can do. But it won’t help them. They won’t avoid responsibility for everything they have done,” President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a statement, describing strikes that hit infrastructure and residential buildings in ten regions.
Russia’s defence ministry said it had carried out a “massive retaliatory strike” on Ukrainian infrastructure as payback for a cross-border raid last week on a village in Russia’s Bryansk region.
Villagers in Zolochiv in Ukraine’s western Lviv region carried a body in a black plastic bag over the rubble of a brick house completely destroyed by a missile. They put the body into the back of a white van with two others, of at least five people killed there. A dog lay curled up on a carpet in the ruins.
Oksana Ostapenko said the house belonged to her sister Halyna, whose body was still buried under the rubble with two other family members.
“They still haven’t found them. We were hoping that they’re alive. But, they’re not alive,” she said.
Another civilian was reported killed by the missiles in the central Dnipro region. Three civilians were separately reported killed by artillery in Kherson.
In the capital Kyiv, a seven-hour air strike alert through the night was the longest of the Russian air campaign that began in October.
“I heard a very loud explosion, very loud. We quickly jumped out of bed and saw one car on fire. Then the other cars caught on fire as well. The glass shattered on the balconies and windows,” said Liudmyla, 58, holding a toddler in her arms.
“The child got scared and jumped out of bed,” she said. “How can they do this? How is this possible? They are not humans, I don’t know what to call them.”
Moscow says its campaign of targeting Ukraine’s infrastructure far from the front is intended to reduce its ability to fight. Kyiv says the air strikes have no military purpose and aim to harm and intimidate civilians, a war crime.
Ukrainian officials said it was the first time they had faced so many kinzhal missiles, which Ukraine has no way to shoot down. Russia is believed to have just a few dozen kinzhals, which fly many times faster than the speed of sound and which President Vladimir Putin touts as a weapon for which NATO has no answer.
Ukraine said the attack had knocked out the power supply to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, severing it from the Ukrainian grid and forcing it onto emergency diesel power to prevent a meltdown.
