KYIV, Ukraine (AP) – Russia launched a major drone and missile attack against Ukraine on Sunday. It was the largest attack in months, officials said, targeting energy infrastructure and killing civilians.
The attack comes amid growing concerns about the Russian government’s intentions to destroy Ukraine’s power generation capacity ahead of the winter.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Russia launched a total of 120 missiles and 90 drones across Ukraine in a major attack. He said that in addition to the Iranian-made Shahed, various types of unmanned aircraft were deployed, including cruise ballistic missiles, ballistic missiles, and air-launched ballistic missiles.
Read more: Russian drone and ballistic missile attacks kill at least 6 civilians in Ukraine
The Ukrainian Air Force reported late Sunday that Ukrainian defense forces shot down 144 out of a total of 210 air targets.
“The enemy’s targets were energy infrastructure throughout Ukraine. Unfortunately, there is damage from debris from collisions with objects and falling objects. In Mykolaiv, as a result of a drone attack, two people were killed and six others, including two children, were killed. injured,” President Zelenskiy said.
Two more people were killed in the Odesa region, where the attack damaged energy infrastructure and disrupted electricity and water supplies, local governor Ole Kipel said. Hours later, the company announced that both victims were employees of Ukrenergo, Ukraine’s state-owned power grid operator.
Serhiy Popko, head of Kyiv’s military bureau, said the combined drone and missile attack was the most powerful in three months.
One person was injured when the roof of a five-story house burst into flames in Kiev’s historic center, Popko said.
The thermal power plant operated by private energy company DTEK “suffered severe damage,” the company said.
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of the neighboring country in February 2022, Ukraine’s electricity infrastructure has been severely damaged by Russian attacks, resulting in repeated emergency power outages and nationwide rolling blackouts. Ukrainian officials have regularly urged Western allies to strengthen their air defenses to counter attacks and enable repairs.
According to local reports, explosions were heard Sunday across Ukraine, including the capital Kiev, the main southern port Odesa, and the western and central regions.
The Polish military’s operational command wrote in X that Polish and allied aircraft, including fighter jets, were in Polish airspace due to Russia’s “massive” attack on neighboring Ukraine. The measure was aimed at ensuring security in Poland’s border areas, the newspaper said.
Russia’s Ministry of Defense on Sunday acknowledged carrying out a “large-scale” missile and drone attack on “critical energy infrastructure” in Ukraine, but said all targeted facilities were linked to Kiev’s military industry. He claimed that there was.
Ukraine’s nuclear power plants were not directly affected, but several dependent substations suffered further damage, the United Nations nuclear power watchdog said in a statement on Sunday. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, only two of Ukraine’s nine operating nuclear reactors continue to generate electricity at full capacity.
Ukrainian drone attacks Russia
On Sunday, Ukrainian drones struck Russia’s battleground Kursk region, killing a local journalist, the country’s governor Alexei Smirnov reported.
Months after Moscow’s daring invasion in August, which marked the biggest offensive against Russia since World War II and saw battle-hardened Ukrainian troops quickly seize hundreds of square miles (kilometers) of territory, For the time being, there has been tension to remove Ukrainian forces from the southern region.
A Ukrainian drone dropped an explosive on a car in Russia’s Belgorod Oblast near Ukraine, killing a man on the spot, local governor Vyacheslav Gladkov reported.
On Sunday, another Ukrainian drone targeted a drone factory in Izhevsk, in the Russian hinterland, according to the anti-Kremlin Russian news channel on the messaging app Telegram. Regional leader Alexander Brechalov reported that a drone exploded near a factory in the city, blowing out windows but causing no serious damage. Brechalov said the man was briefly hospitalized with head injuries.
