Ukrainians raced to repair the damage and restart services on Saturday, a day after one of the heaviest Russian missile assaults on infrastructure killed at least five people and knocked out power and water in many of the country’s main cities.

With Ukrainians already on edge about further strikes, new explosions rang out over the port city of Odesa early Saturday, and air-raid alerts sounded across the country a few hours later. Midmorning, the Ukrainian general command warned that military jets were taking off from neighbouring Belarus and that the whole of Ukraine was a potential target.

Early reports from Ukrainian officials on Saturday were of incoming missiles being intercepted. The country’s southern military command said that two incoming Russian missiles had been intercepted by its air defence in Odesa and caused no casualties.

Across the country, Ukrainian rescue and utility workers were working to restore electricity and water supplies knocked out in a large wave of strikes on power plants and electricity networks on Friday.

Ukraine’s general staff said on Saturday that the Russians had launched 98 missiles and 65 rockets fired from multiple-rocket systems aimed at civilian and energy infrastructure targets in that barrage. The military previously had put the figure at 76 missiles, and although it was not immediately clear why the count changed, information in the initial hours after an attack is frequently incomplete.

Ukrainian officials said that 60 missiles were shot down before they could reach their targets, but 14 regions lost power and running water in the hours after the strikes.

Since Ukraine succeeded in pushing back Russian forces and regaining territory on the battlefield in eastern and southern Ukraine in recent months, Moscow has turned toa strategy of attacking power plants and energy supplies.

Ukrainians have responded with defiance, and the government has sought to bolster morale by repairing the damage as swiftly as possible.

President Zelensky said on Friday that workers had begun repairs even before the air-raid warnings were lifted.“Our power engineers and repair crews have already started working during the air alert and are doing everything possible to restore generation and supply,” he said in his overnight speech to the nation. “It takes time. But it will be done.”

By Saturday morning, the Kyiv subway was running again, mayor Ivan Klitschko said on the Telegram social media app. Water was back on, and electricity had been restored to a large part of the city.

“The water supply has been brought back to all residents of the capital,” he said.“Half of Kyiv citizens already have heating.”

New York Times News Service