Russia launched a large-scale missile and drone attack against Ukraine on Thursday morning, targeting energy infrastructure across the country. President Zelenskyy said several regions have been attacked with cluster munitions.
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Russia attacked Ukraine early in the morning on Thursday with scores of missiles and drones launched across the entire country, targeting the energy grid and leaving more than 1 million Ukrainians without electricity.
Explosions were reported in multiple cities, including Kyiv, Kharkiv, Mykolayiv, Odesa, Lutsk and Rivne, in an attack that lasted more than nine and a half hours.
Ukrainian Air Defence reported that 176 missiles and drones out of 188 have been intercepted. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Moscow has specifically targeted Ukraine's energy infrastructure.
He said several regions have been attacked with cluster munitions.
“These cluster munitions make it much more difficult for our rescuers and power engineers to eliminate the consequences of the strike, and this is a very despicable escalation of Russian terrorist tactics,” Zelenskyy said.
Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko said that Russia struck a "massive blow" at the nation's power grid. Ukrenergo, the state grid operator, first announced emergency blackouts in multiple regions in an effort to safeguard the energy system from Russia's assault.
The emergency measures were cancelled by midday Thursday, reverting to planned hourly outage schedules instead.
Putin: Attack in response to strikes with Western weapons
Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the Thursday morning attack was a response to Ukraine's attacks with UK and US weapons last week, although Moscow has been deliberately targeting Ukraine’s energy grid every winter for the past almost three years.
Putin said Russia is selecting targets in Ukraine that could include decision-making centres in Kyiv. Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, the Russian president repeatedly said that decision-making centres, including governmental offices, parliament and the presidential office, have all been "targets" for Moscow.
Andriy Yermak, the head of Ukraine's Presidential Office, said on Thursday that Russia has been deliberately stockpiling weapons, including arms from North Korea, in order to launch mass attacks on cities and infrastructure. "They stockpiled missiles for strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure, for warfare against civilians during the cold, during the winter," Yermak said.
Over 280,000 households in the northwestern Rivne region were without electricity because of the attack, said the regional head, Oleksandr Koval. There were also interruptions to water supplies in affected areas. Some schools in Rivne city have been instructed to study remotely Thursday.
In the bordering Volyn region, 215,000 households had no electricity, according to the head of administration, Ivan Rudnytskyi. All critical infrastructure that lost power has been switched to generators.
Local officials ordered opening the “points of invincibility” — shelter-type places where people can charge their phones and other devices and warm up during blackouts.