Ukrainian soldiers guard the skies with machine-guns on a city street during Russia’s biggest missile and drone attack against Ukrainian energy objects, in Kyiv, Ukraine, August 26, 2024. Photo credit: AP
Russia attacked much of Ukraine on Monday (August 26, 2024), firing dozens of missiles and drones, killing four people, wounding more than a dozen and damaging energy facilities, which President Volodymyr Zelensky described as “disgusting”.
The attack by more than 100 missiles and an equal number of drones began around midnight and continued until dawn. Russia’s biggest attack in weeks.
Ukraine’s air force said swarms of Russian drones attacked eastern, northern, southern and central regions, followed by strikes with cruise and ballistic missiles.
“Like most previous Russian attacks, this one was equally vicious, targeting vital civilian infrastructure,” Zelensky said, adding that most of the country was hit – from the Kharkiv region and Kiev to Odessa and the west.
Explosions were heard in the capital of Kiev. Mayor Vitali Klitschko said the attack had disrupted power and water supplies in the city.
This handout photo taken and released by the Ukrainian Emergency Service on August 26, 2024 shows rescue workers working at the site of a missile attack at an unidentified location in the Dnipro region, Ukraine. | Photo credit: AFP/HO/Ukrainian Emergency Service
Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said Russia had fired drones, cruise missiles and hypersonic ballistic Kinzhal missiles at 15 regions of Ukraine – more than half the country’s territory.
“Energy infrastructure has once again become a target of Russian terrorists,” Shmyal said, adding that the state-owned power grid operator, Ukrenergo, has been forced to implement emergency power cuts to stabilise the system.
He urged Ukraine’s allies to provide it with long-range weapons and allow it to use them against targets inside Russia.
“To stop the barbaric shelling of Ukrainian cities, it is necessary to destroy the place from which Russian missiles are fired,” Shmyhal said. “We count on the support of our allies and of course Russia will have to pay a price for this.”
US President Joe Biden called the Russian attack on energy infrastructure “outrageous” and said he had “re-prioritized US air defense exports so they are sent to Ukraine first.” He also said the US was “sending energy equipment to Ukraine to repair its systems and strengthen the resilience of Ukraine’s energy grid.”
The Russian Defense Ministry said the strikes used “long-range precision air and sea weapons and drones against critical energy infrastructure facilities that support the operations of Ukraine’s military-industrial complex. All identified targets were hit.”
Local authorities reported that at least four people were killed – one in the western city of Lutsk, one in the central Dnipropetrovsk region, one in Zhytomyr in the center of the country, and one in the partially occupied Zaporizhzhia region in the southeast. Thirteen others were injured – one in the Kiev region surrounding the capital, five in Lutsk, three in the southern Mykolaiv region and four in the neighboring Odessa region.
There were reports of blackouts and damage to civilian infrastructure and residential buildings from the Sumy region in the east to the Mykolaiv and Odessa regions in the south and the Rivne region in the west.
In the eastern province of Sumy, bordering Russia, local authorities reported power was cut in 194 settlements, while 19 others experienced partial blackouts.
Private energy company DTEK initiated the emergency blackouts, saying in a statement that “energy workers across the country work 24/7 to restore light to Ukrainians’ homes.” In the wake of the barrages and power cuts, authorities across Ukraine were ordered to open “points of inviolability” — shelter-type locations where people can charge their phones and other devices and get refreshments during the blackouts, Shmyhal said. Such points were first opened in the autumn of 2022, when Russia targeted Ukraine’s energy infrastructure with weekly barrages.
In neighbouring Poland, the military said the attack activated Polish and NATO air defence systems in the east of the country.
Meanwhile, officials in Russia reported a Ukrainian drone attack overnight.
Four people were injured in the central region of Saratov, where drones struck residential buildings in two towns. Local authorities said one drone struck a residential building in the city of Saratov, and another struck a residential building in the city of Engels, where there is a military airfield that has been attacked before.
The Russian Defence Ministry said a total of 22 Ukrainian drones were intercepted during the night and in the morning in eight provinces, including the Saratov and Yaroslavl regions of central Russia.
Russia also said its troops had thwarted Ukrainian attempts to advance on half a dozen settlements in the Kursk region, where Ukraine made incursions on August 6, catching Russia by surprise.
Fighting in the region has raised concerns about the nuclear power plant there. Rafael Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said he would visit the plant on Tuesday.