Russia pounded Ukraine with missiles and drones in waves of attacks on Thursday, killing at least 11 people, and damaging dozens of buildings and energy facilities in an array of regions, officials said.
According to Reuters, crowds of people took cover in Kyiv’s metro stations as an air raid alert sounded at rush hour before Russia unleashed its latest in a campaign of attacks on the power grid since October that has caused sweeping outages during winter.
The missile strikes followed drone attacks overnight, one day after Ukraine secured pledges of main battle tanks from Germany and the United States to beef up its troops – a move that infuriated Russian officials.
This is such a tragedy for me. I’m telling you, I’m left without anything. What else can I say?” said 67-year-old Halyna Panosyan whose house was destroyed in the village of Hlevakha near Kyiv.
“At first, I heard a roar. There was an extremely loud strike that made me jump up. I was in the bedroom… I was saved by the fact that the bedroom is to the other side of the house,” she said.
Air defences shot down 47 of 55 missiles that included at least one Kh-47 Kinzhal hypersonic missile, General Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, Ukraine’s top military commander, said.
Twenty missiles were downed in the vicinity of Kyiv where a 55-year-old man was killed and two people wounded as a missile hit non-residential buildings in the city’s south, officials said.
“At first, I heard a roar. There was an extremely loud strike that made me jump up. I was in the bedroom… I was saved by the fact that the bedroom is to the other side of the house,” she said.
Air defences shot down 47 of 55 missiles that included at least one Kh-47 Kinzhal hypersonic missile, General Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, Ukraine’s top military commander, said.
Twenty missiles were downed in the vicinity of Kyiv where a 55-year-old man was killed and two people wounded as a missile hit non-residential buildings in the city’s south, officials said.
“The goal of the Russians remains unchanged: psychological pressure on Ukrainians and the destruction of critical infrastructure,” he wrote. “But we cannot be broken!”
Russia has denied targeting civilians in what it calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine but has said critical infrastructure is a legitimate military target.
Oleksandr Khorunzhyi, the spokesperson for the State Emergency Service, said Thursday’s attacks killed 11 people, wounded 11 more and damaged 35 buildings across 11 regions.
In separate statements, officials said one person had been killed in the region of Kryvy Rih, two in the Donetsk and Kharkiv regions, and three in the region of Zaporizhzhia. An energy worker was also killed.
The military said its air defences shot down all 24 drones unleashed by Russia overnight. Fifteen of them were downed around Kyiv where there were no reports of any damage, they said.
