Kyiv, Aug 26: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Monday condemned Russia’s overnight and early morning barrage on his country as “vile” and said it involved over 100 missiles of various types and about 100 “Shahed” drones.
Ukraine’s leader said there were deaths and dozens of injuries and that the attack caused a lot of damage to Ukraine’s energy sector.
“Like most previous Russian strikes, this one was just as vile, targeting critical civilian infrastructure. Most of our regions – from the Kharkiv region and Kyiv to Odesa and our western regions,” Zelenskyy said.
The barrage began around midnight and continued beyond daybreak in what appeared to be Russia’s biggest attack against Ukraine in weeks.
Russian forces fired drones, cruise missiles and hypersonic ballistic Kinzhal missiles at 15 Ukrainian regions – more than half the country, Ukraine’s Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said Monday morning.
“The energy infrastructure has once again become the target of Russian terrorists. Unfortunately, there is damage in a number of regions,” Shmyhal said, adding that Ukraine’s state-owned power grid operator, Ukrenergo, has been forced to implement emergency power cuts to stabilize the system.
He called on Ukraine’s allies to provide Kyiv with long-range weapons and permission to use them on targets inside Russia.
“In order to stop the barbaric shelling of Ukrainian cities, it is necessary to destroy the place from which the Russian missiles are launched,” Shmyhal said. “We count on the support of our allies and will definitely make Russia pay.” According to Ukraine’s air force, there were multiple groups of Russian drones moving toward eastern, northern, southern, and central regions of Ukraine, followed by multiple cruise and ballistic missiles.
The Russian Defence Ministry said in a statement that the attacks used “long-range precision air- and sea-based weapons and strike drones against critical energy infrastructure facilities that support the operation of Ukraine’s military-industrial complex. All designated targets were hit.” Explosions were heard in the capital, Kyiv. Power and water supplies in the city have been disrupted by the attack, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said. At least four people were killed – one in the western city of Lutsk, one in the central Dnipropetrovsk region, one in Zhytomyr in the country’s centre and one in the partially occupied Zaporizhzhia region in the southeast, according to local officials. (AP)
