Russia launched its biggest aerial attack in weeks on Thursday, hitting targets across Ukraine with a complex barrage of weapons including its newest hypersonic missiles, in what it said was retaliation for an incursion last week by a pro-Ukrainian armed group in the Bryansk region of Russia.
Ending weeks of relative calm in Kyiv and other cities, the strikes killed at least nine people nationwide, knocked out power in several areas and damaged three electrical plants, Ukrainian officials said. The strikes included six of the new hypersonic missiles known as Kinzhals, or Daggers, the most Russia has used in a single wave since the war began a year ago, according to Ukraine’s Air Force.
Of the 81 missiles fired overnight and through the morning, 47 hit targets, Ukraine said. That is a far higher ratio of strikes to missiles fired than Russia has achieved in barrages over recent months.
Volodymyr Zelensky described the barrage that came while many people slept as an attempt by Moscow “to intimidate Ukrainians again”. “The occupiers can only terrorise civilians. That’s all they can do,” Zelensky said in an online statement.
The war has largely ground to a battlefield stalemate over the winter. The Kremlin’s forces started targeting Ukraine’s power supply last October in an apparent attempt to demoralise the civilian population.
US intelligence doesn’t believe Russia can make major territorial gains in Ukraine this year due to its large numbers of casualties, its inability to replenish its stocks of weapons and ammunition, and poor leadership and morale, Avril Haines, the director of national intelligence, told a US Senate committee on Wednesday.
The latest missile attack left almost half of the consumers in Kyiv without heating, with temperatures at around 9° Celsius amid a spring thaw. Air raid sirens wailed through the night across Ukraine, including the capital, Kyiv, where explosions occurred in two western areas of the city. Russia launched 81 missiles and eight exploding Shahid drones, according to Ukraine’s chief commander of the armed forces, Valerii Zaluzhnyi. Thirty-four cruise missiles were intercepted.
New York Times News Service and AP/PTI
