Kyiv, Ukraine — Russia has unleashed a massive barrage of drones and missiles across Ukraine On Monday, attacks targeted energy infrastructure, killing at least three people and power facilities in at least three regions. Officials in the Zaporizhia, Rivne and Lviv regions said in social media posts that energy infrastructure had been attacked. Officials in several other regions also reported strikes on power sites and other critical infrastructure.
The barrage began around midnight and continued past dawn, in what appears to be the largest Russian attack on Ukraine in weeks.
“Energy infrastructure has once again become a target of Russian terrorists. Unfortunately, damage has been observed in several regions,” Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal Shmyhal said, adding that Ukraine’s state-owned power grid operator Ukrenergo had been forced to carry out emergency power outages to stabilize the system.
He called on Ukraine’s allies to provide kyiv with long-range weapons and permission to use them on targets in Russia.
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“To stop the barbaric bombing of Ukrainian cities, it is necessary to destroy the points from which Russian missiles are fired,” Shmyhal said. “We are counting on the support of our allies and we will make Russia pay.”
According to the Ukrainian Air Force, several groups of Russian drones flew over the eastern, northern, southern and central regions of the country, followed by several cruise and ballistic missiles. Explosions were heard in the capital, Kiev, and the city’s electricity and water supplies were interrupted by the attack, Kiev Mayor Vitali Klitschko said.
Following the bombing, the city announced plans to open “invincibility points,” shelters where residents can recharge their devices and cool off in the event of a power outage. Such points were first opened in Ukraine in the fall of 2022, when Russia targeted the country’s energy infrastructure with weekly bombings.
Ihor Polishchuk, mayor of the western Ukrainian city of Lutsk, said a multi-story residential building and unspecified infrastructure were hit and one person was killed. Another person was killed in the central Dnipropetrovsk region, where the attack sparked several fires, damaged a dozen homes and completely destroyed two, regional mayor Serhii Lysak said. One person was rescued from the rubble, Lysak said.
One person was also killed in the partially occupied Zaporizhia region in the south-east of the country, the head of the region, Ivan Fedorov, said. According to him, an infrastructure was hit and caught fire.
In the southern Mykolaiv region, three people were injured, the head of the region, Vitalii Kim, said. He also called on the region’s residents to use the region’s “invincibility points.”
In the Kiev region, one person was injured in an attack that hit unspecified infrastructure and residential houses, regional head Ruslan Kravchenko said.
Ukrainian private energy company DTEK has implemented emergency power outages, saying in an online statement that “energy workers across the country are working 24/7 to restore light to Ukrainian homes.”
In neighboring Poland, the military said Polish and NATO air defenses were activated in the eastern part of the country following the attack.
In Russia, authorities reported a Ukrainian drone attack overnight and Monday morning.
Four people were injured in the Saratov region in central Russia, where drones struck residential buildings in two cities. One drone crashed into a residential building in the city of Saratov, and another hit a residential building in the town of Engels, where a military airfield is located that had previously been attacked, local authorities said.
The Russian Defense Ministry said a total of 22 Ukrainian drones were intercepted overnight and in the morning over eight Russian regions, including the Saratov and Yaroslavl regions in central Russia.
