The second massive airstrike in days was launched by Russia in Ukraine, with a barrage of missiles fired at several regions of the country.
The purpose of the massive attack, officials said, appeared to have been to destroy Ukraine’s power grid in the hope that damaging Ukraine away from the front lines would allow Russia to win on the battlefield.
In the capital Kyiv, explosions were heard in the southwestern Kholosivsky district, as well as in the eastern Dniprovsky and Desnyansky districts, according to the city’s mayor Vitaly Klitschko. It is still unclear whether the missiles hit their targets or whether the sounds were from Ukraine’s air defenses.
So far, strikes have been reported in the southern city of Kryvyi Rih, where a residential building was hit, not an energy facility. The deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential administration, Kyrillo Tymoshenko, said there could be victims under the rubble and emergency services were on the scene.
Elsewhere, in Ukraine’s eastern and central regions of Kharkiv and Poltava, authorities reported power outages. Kharkiv Governor Oleg Sinegubov confirmed that energy infrastructure had been hit, and Ukrainian public broadcaster Suspilne reported power outages in the region. The neighboring Poltava region is without electricity, according to the mayor of the city of Poltava Alexander Mamai.
The sound of air defense is also heard in the regions of Dnipro, Ternopil, Mykolaiv, Zaporozhye, Donetsk, Kirovograd, Zhytomyr, Khmelnitsky and Vinnytsia.
On Wednesday, Ukraine’s air defense forces said they had shot down all 13 Iranian-supplied drones that Russia had fired into Kyiv city and Kyiv region. No casualties were reported, although several buildings were damaged by debris from the downed drones.
Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov told the Guardian on Thursday that Ukraine is winning the air war thanks to its air defense forces, which have improved their skills and equipment over the past nine months. He said the effectiveness of these forces had gone from 50 percent to 80 percent since the start of the war.
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