SKNYLIV: Russia launched a wave of missiles and drones at Ukrainian energy facilities at dawn on Wednesday, intensifying a months-long bombing campaign at a precarious moment of the war for Ukraine.
The Russian barrage came just one day after Kyiv said it had carried out its largest aerial attack of the war on Russian army factories and energy hubs hundreds of kilometres from the front line.
The Ukrainian air force said Russia had launched 43 cruise and ballistic missiles as well as 74 attack drones in the barrage that targeted sites mainly in western Ukraine.
Oleksandra Komuna, an elderly resident of the western Ukrainian village of Sknyliv, was at home during the attack when lamps and plaster began falling.
“All the doors and windows were blown out, everything was blown out. The car was damaged, and the roof was damaged. There were cracks everywhere. It’s such a disaster,” she told AFP.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was quick to condemn the strikes and called for more robust security assistance from allies abroad.
“Another massive Russian attack. It is the middle of winter, and the target for the Russians remains the same: our energy sector,” he wrote on social media.
The Russian defence ministry confirmed in a daily briefing that its forces had carried out “high precision” strikes on energy facilities that “support the Ukrainian military-industrial complex”.
It also repeated the claim that all the designated targets had been struck.
The Ukrainian air force said however that it had shot down 30 of the missiles and 47 drones, while Prime Minister Denys Shmygal said the Russian attack had “failed”.
– Poland scrambles jets –
Hours after the barrage, Zelenskyy met Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk in Warsaw, where the two held a press conference.
“The targets were very close to our Ukrainian border with Poland,” Zelenskyy said of the overnight strikes, urging closer cooperation.
Tusk said Poland would help “speed up” Ukraine’s accession to the European Union, while Zelenskyy said membership could help avert future Russian aggression.
Poland had earlier scrambled fighter jets to secure its airspace, it announced on social media, adding that there had been no violations of its airspace over its three-hour mission.
The governor of Ukraine’s western Ivano-Frankivsk region said that critical infrastructure facilities had been targeted in the attack, without elaborating.
In the Lviv region, which borders EU and Nato member Poland, authorities said two critical infrastructure facilities had been hit in the Drogobych and Stryi districts.
“There were no casualties, but there was damage,” governor Maksym Kozytsky wrote on social media.
National grid operator Ukrenergo urged Ukrainians to limit their electricity use throughout the day after lifting emergency blackouts in seven regions.
– Russia advances –
The mayor of the southern city of Kherson meanwhile said that “part of our community is without electricity” as a result of the overnight barrage, without giving figures of those without power.
Kyiv had earlier issued air raid alerts across Ukraine and AFP journalists heard sirens ringing out over the capital early Wednesday.
Moscow has pursued a months-long bombing campaign against Ukrainian energy infrastructure claiming the attacks are targeted against facilities that aid Kyiv’s military.
The Russian military had accused Kyiv of using US- and British-supplied missiles for one of the strikes the previous day and promised it would “not go unanswered”.
Kyiv and Moscow’s escalating drone and missile attacks come at a difficult moment for Ukraine across the sprawling front line.
At several key points in the northern Kharkiv and eastern Donetsk regions, Russian forces have been able to steadily advance by exploiting their advantages in manpower and resources.
Building on those gains, the Russian defence ministry said Wednesday that its forces had captured the village of Ukrainka in the industrial Donetsk region that the Kremlin claims is part of Russia.
Despite the war having ground on for nearly three years, there are still some areas of cooperation between Moscow and Kyiv, which announced Wednesday that they had exchanged 25 prisoners of war each.
