Ukrainian authorities have issued air raid alerts across the country amid further deadly strikes as Russian bombers took to the skies, a day after Moscow carried out a “massive” attack on Ukraine’s power grid.
Ukraine’s air force confirmed early Tuesday the “takeoff of several Tu-95MS from the Engels airfield” in western Russia,
Two more people were killed overnight and five injured in a strike that hit a hotel in the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih, according to emergency services, while another two were killed and four injured in drone attacks on the city of Zaporizhzhia, east of Kryvyi Rih.
Kyiv region’s air defence systems were deployed several times overnight to repel missiles and drones targeting the Ukrainian capital, the region’s military administration said on Telegram. Reuters witnesses reported at least three rounds of explosions overnight in Kyiv.
Kryvyi Rih, Kyiv and central and eastern regions of Ukraine were under air raid alerts for most of the night, starting at around 11pm on Monday.
Two civilians may be still under the rubble of the hotel in Kryvyi Rih, Serhiy Lisak, the governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region where Kryvyi Rih is located, said on Telegram. Six shops, four high-rise buildings and eight cars were also damaged there, he added.
Analysts at the Washington-based thinktank Institute for the Study of War, said in their note late on Monday that Moscow “likely lacks the defence-industrial capacity to sustain such massive strikes at a similar scale with regularity.”
On Monday, Russia fired hundreds of drones and missiles at Ukraine, killing at least seven people and battering the country’s already weakened energy grid, officials said.
The Russian attack triggered widespread blackouts and water outages including in Kyiv and came after Ukraine claimed new advances in its incursion in Russia’s Kursk region.
On Monday, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Moscow had launched at least 127 missiles and 109 drones in “one of the largest Russian attacks”.
Of those, 102 missiles and 99 drones were shot down, according to Ukrainian air force commander Mykola Oleshchuk, who described it as Russia’s “most massive” attack.
The US and Britain both condemned the assault, with US president Joe Biden calling it “outrageous” and British foreign secretary David Lammy calling it “cowardly”.
Germany’s foreign ministry said that “once again, Putin’s Russia is saturating Ukraine’s lifelines with missiles”.
State-owned electricity supplier Ukrenergo announced emergency power cuts to stabilise its system after the barrage, while train schedules were disrupted.
Since invading in February 2022, Russia has launched repeated large-scale drone and missile attacks on Ukraine, including punishing strikes on energy facilities.
The Russian defence ministry confirmed it had hit energy facilities in a statement on Monday, claiming that they were being used to aid Ukraine’s “military-production complex”.
Nato member Poland said its airspace was violated during the barrage, probably by a drone. “We are probably dealing with the entry of an object on Polish territory. The object was confirmed by at least three radiolocation stations,” Gen Maciej Klisz, operational commander of the armed forces, told reporters.
Zelenskiy called for European air forces to help Kyiv down drones and missiles in the future. “In our various regions of Ukraine, we could do much more to protect lives if the aviation of our European neighbours worked together with our F-16s and together with our air defence,” Zelenskiy said in an address.
Monday’s aerial barrage came after a safety adviser working for the Reuters news agency, Ryan Evans, was killed in a missile strike on a hotel in eastern Ukraine late on Saturday. Six of the agency’s crew covering the war were staying at the hotel in Kramatorsk, the last major city under Ukrainian control in the Donetsk region.
Ivan Lyubysh-Kirdey, a journalist, was in critical condition after the strike, Reuters said on Monday. A second, Daniel Peleschuk, was injured while the other three team members have been accounted for, according to the agency.
The Kremlin said there was “still no clarity” about the strike when asked about Zelensky’s assertion that the attack was carried out “deliberately”.
Agence France-Presse and Reuters contributed to this report