Russia launched one of its largest missile and drone strikes against energy infrastructure and other targets across Ukraine on Sunday as its invasion nears the 1,000-day mark.
A total of about 120 cruise, ballistic and aeroballistic missiles — including Tsirkons, Iskanders and Kinzhals — and 90 drones were fired by Kremlin forces, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Telegram.
Air defense forces destroyed more than 140 targets, he said, adding that Ukrainian F-16 pilots downed ten aerial targets during the attack.
Russia’s defense ministry reported successful strikes on the infrastructure of military airfields and gas production facilities in Ukraine, adding it also targeted “energy facilities that support the Ukrainian military-industrial complex.” Claims that airfields had been hit weren’t confirmed by Ukraine.
The barrage seriously damaged several DTEK thermoelectric power plants, the power generating company said on Telegram. It was the eighth large-scale missile attack against the company’s infrastructure this year, DTEK said without elaborating how many plants were hit, and where.
Ukraine’s grid operator imposed emergency power cutoffs across the country, Energy Minister German Galushchenko said on Facebook. Ukraine powered down most of the remaining operational nuclear reactors under its control following the attack, according to the UN’s atomic watchdog.
Two people were killed and six injured in Mykolayiv in Ukraine’s south, Zelenskyy said. Other fatalities were reported in the far western Lviv region and in Dnipro in central Ukraine.
In the capital, the combined missile and drone strike was the largest in three months, Kyiv’s military administration said on Telegram, reporting one injury.
As it has numerous times, NATO-member Poland activated fighter jets and ground-based air defense near its shared border with Ukraine, its operational command said on social media.
The missile and drone barrage comes days after German Chancellor Olaf Scholz spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin, their first contact in two years, drawing Ukraine’s ire.
“This is war criminal Putin’s true response to all those who called and visited him recently. We need peace through strength, not appeasement,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said in a post on X.
Ukraine is bracing for another winter under attack from Russia, with large parts of the country’s energy infrastructure already damaged or destroyed.
The impending return to the White House of Donald Trump, who’s said he’d seek a quick deal between Kyiv and Moscow to end the war but hasn’t spelled out any potential terms, adds to the uncertainty.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau backed Scholz’s contact with Putin, saying that ending the war will require some engagement with Russia’s President.
Ending conflicts “requires a level of engagement with counterparts who in many cases we disagree with,” Trudeau said Saturday in Peru, where he was attending the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.
Russia’s missile barrage comes as its ground forces continue to capture more territory in eastern Ukraine.
Data posted on Telegram by the war-monitoring group DeepState showed the Russian army occupied an additional 57 square kilometers (22 square miles) of Ukrainian territory on Friday, the day of Scholz’s call with Putin.
That was the largest one-day capture by Kremlin forces this year apart from one day in May, DeepState said. The biggest advances were seen in the Kharkiv region.
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