KYIV (Reuters) – Russia launched a second massive missile salvo into Ukraine early Monday morning, damaging buildings and injuring at least 34 people in the eastern city of Pavlovrad, but Kiev They remain unharmed, officials said.
Around 3am, air raid sirens began to sound in the capital.
At 4.45am, the sound of explosions continued as the missile was intercepted by Ukrainian defense systems.
A total of 18 cruise missiles were launched from the Murmansk region and the Caspian Sea region, of which he intercepted 15, said Supreme Commander of the Ukrainian Armed Forces Valerii Zaluzhnyi.
Kiev’s chief executive, Serhii Popko, said all rockets fired at the city and some drones were shot down. He didn’t provide further details, but said more information would become available later. The attack followed Friday’s launch of more than 20 cruise missiles and two explosive drones in Ukraine, and was the first to target Kiev in almost two months.
In that attack, a Russian missile hit an apartment in Uman, a town about 215 kilometers (135 miles) south of Kiev, killing 21 of his people, including three children.
In Monday’s attack, a rocket hit Pavlovrad in the eastern Dnipropetrovsk region, injuring 34 people, including five children, said his Serhii Lysak, a senior official in the region.
Seven rockets landed in the city, “some of which were intercepted”, but others hit industrial facilities, set fires and residential areas, 19 apartments, 25 houses, He said six schools and five businesses were damaged.
Rockets also hit his three other neighborhoods in the area, he said, damaging homes and schools.
Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said on Monday that Russia “carried out mass missile strikes using long-range precision-guided air and sea weapons against Ukrainian defense industrial installations… All designated installations were hit.” It was done,” he said.
The attack also damaged Ukraine’s power grid infrastructure, but Energy Minister Herman Kharshenko said repairs would take days.
He said about 20,000 people in the city of Kherson and the wider area were left without electricity, along with an unspecified number of people in the Dnepropetrovsk region, including the city of Dnipro. Moscow launched frequent long-range missile attacks throughout the 14-month war, often indiscriminately hitting civilian areas.
Ukraine recently received US-made Patriot missiles that provide improved missile defense, but it was not clear if any of them were used to thwart Monday morning’s attacks.
Ukraine is also building mechanized brigades with armor supplied by Western allies, who are also training Ukrainian forces and ammunition as Kiev prepares for the counterattack expected this spring.
In the latest strike against the annexed peninsula on Saturday, two Ukrainian drones attacked a Russian oil depot in Crimea.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an interview last week that Ukraine would try to retake the peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014. In a brutal war of attrition, the fiercest fighting has taken place in the eastern Donetsk region, where Russia struggles to besiege the city of Bakhmut in the face of stubborn Ukrainian defenses.
Troops of the Russian Wagner mercenary group and others are fighting against Ukrainian military houses to gain control of the so-called “Road of Life” – the last remaining road in the West and still Ukrainian. It’s on hand and plays an important role in supplies and a new army.
Ukrainian Army General Oleksandr Shirsky said Russia was making “maximum efforts” to capture the city, but so far failed. “In parts of the city, the enemy was attacked by our troops and abandoned some positions,” he said.
In Russia’s Bryansk region, which borders northern Ukraine, a freight train was derailed by an explosive device, said regional governor Alexander Bogomaz.
There was no immediate evidence of who detonated the explosives, but Bryansk suffered sporadic cross-border shelling during the war, and two people were killed in an attack by Ukrainian saboteurs in March. Bryansk officials said.
