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Russia unleashed a massive drone and missile barrage throughout Ukraine on Monday, targeting energy infrastructure. At least three people were reported killed, and power cuts were reported across the country.

Energy facilities in at least four Ukrainian regions were hit in Russian barrageThe Associated Press

· Posted: Aug 26, 2024 7:36 AM EDT | Last Updated: 1 hour ago

Russia unleashes large-scale drone, missile attack on UkraineRussia launched more than 100 missiles and around 100 attack drones at Ukraine during the morning rush hour on Monday, killing at least five people, officials said. People took cover inside the city’s subway stations.

The barrage began around midnight and continued beyond daybreak in what appeared to be Russia’s biggest attack against Ukraine in weeks.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy condemned Russia’s overnight and early morning barrage and said it involved over 100 missiles of various types and about 100 “Shahed” drones.

“Like most previous Russian strikes, this one was just as vile, targeting critical civilian infrastructure,” he said.

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.

Ukraine’s state-owned power grid operator, Ukrenergo, has been forced to implement emergency power cuts to stabilize the system, he said.

Firefighters work at the site of a Russian missile strike, amid an attack across several regions of Ukraine, in Odesa on Monday. (Press service of the State Emergency Service of Ukraine in Odesa/Reuters)He called on Ukraine’s allies to provide Kyiv with long-range weapons and permission to use them on targets inside Russia.

The United States and other Western allies provide long-range weapons to Ukraine but restrict it from launching them deep into Russia for fear of escalating the war. Ukraine can target the border regions but wants to go deeper into Russia’s molts to infrastructure.

Energy facilities in at least four Ukrainian regions — Zaporizhzhia, Sumy, Rivne and Lviv — were hit in a massive Russian attack on Monday morning, regional officials said.

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.

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.

Blackouts in several locationsAt 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. Thirteen others were wounded — one in the Kyiv region that surrounds the Ukrainian capital, five in Lutsk, three in the southern Mykolaiv region and four in the neighbouring Odesa region.

Blackouts and damage to civilian infrastructure and residential buildings were reported across the country, from the region of Sumy in the east, to the Mykolaiv and Odesa regions in the south, to the region of Rivne in the west.

People take cover inside a metro station during a Russian missile and drone strike, in Ukraine’s capital Kyiv on Monday. (Yurii Kovalenko/Reuters)In Sumy, a province in the east that borders Russia, local administration said that 194 settlements were in a full power blackout, while 19 others had a partial blackout. Ukraine’s private energy company, DTEK, introduced emergency blackouts, saying in an online statement that “energy workers throughout the country work 24/7 to restore light in the homes of Ukrainians.”

In the wake of the barrage and the power cuts, regional officials all across Ukraine were ordered to open “points of invincibility” — shelter-type places where people can charge their devices and get refreshments during energy blackouts, Shmyhal said.

Such points were first opened in Ukraine in the fall of 2022, when Russia targeted the country’s energy infrastructure with weekly barrages.

Firefighters work at the site where an apartment building was hit by a Russian drone strike, in Lutsk on Monday. (State Emergency Service of Ukraine in Volyn/Reuters)Russia promises response to Kursk incursionIn Russia, in the meantime, officials reported a Ukrainian drone attack overnight and on Monday morning. Four people were injured in Russia’s central region of Saratov, where drones hit residential buildings in two cities.

One drone crashed into a residential high-rise in the city of Saratov, and another hit a residential building in the city of Engels, home to a military airfield that had been attacked before, local officials said. Russia’s Defence Ministry said that 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.

In this photo taken from video released by the Russian Defence Ministry on Sunday, a Russian Army Buk-2M self-propelled, medium-range surface-to-air missile system fires at air targets in an undisclosed location in Ukraine. (Russia Defence Ministry Press Service/The Associated Press)Ukraine launched an offensive into Russia’s Kursk region on Aug. 6. Kyiv has claimed control of more than 90 settlements and set up a military commandant office.

The fighting in the Kursk region has raised concerns about the nuclear energy plant there. International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Grossi announced he would lead a group inspection visit to the plant on Tuesday.

The Kremlin said on Monday that there would have to be a Russian response to Ukraine’s incursion, and that the idea of ceasefire talks with Kyiv was no longer relevant.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that such hostile actions could not go without a response.

With files from Reuters