Multiple blasts rocked Kyiv and several other Ukrainian cities reported explosions and power outages on Monday morning as Russia launched a massive wave of heavy airstrikes that echoed the early days of its invasion.
At least 11 people were killed in the strikes, while 64 were injured, Ukrainian emergency services said.
Moscow fired at least 84 cruise missiles towards Ukraine on Monday, the Ukrainian military said, 43 of which were neutralized by missile defense systems. Twenty-four Russian attack drones were also used in the salvo, 13 of which were destroyed.
The assault appears to be the heaviest missile and rocket bombardment seen across most of Ukraine since February, targeting power plants, bridges, civilian infrastructure and other locations.
It comes two days after an eruption damaged a crucial bridge to Crimea and dealt a strategic blow to the Kremlin. A wounded Vladimir Putin, who also saw weeks of Russian casualties on the battlefield, had been under pressure to respond forcefully following the blast, which Putin blamed on Kyiv on Sunday and described as an act of terror.
“It is simply impossible to leave such crimes unaddressed,” Putin said during a brief televised appearance on Monday. “If attempts at terrorist attacks on our territory continue, Russia’s responses will be harsh and will correspond to the scale of the threats against the Russian Federation.”
At least four explosions were heard in the Ukrainian capital during rush hour Monday morning. A children’s playground was among the sites hit by a rocket or missile, according to Anton Gerashchenko, adviser to Ukraine’s interior minister, who tweeted images of a smoking crater in the ground next to the site.
In the western city of Lviv, Mayor Andriy Sadovyi said an explosion had hit “critical infrastructure”.
“Part of the city is without electricity. A third of the traffic lights are not working,” Sadovyi said on Telegram, warning civilians to stay indoors.
Authorities in Sumy, northeastern Ukraine, said there were power outages in the area after missile attacks, reporting that “two missiles hit infrastructure” in Konotop. Kharkiv officials have also reported attacks.
For several hours on Monday morning, Kyiv’s metro system was suspended, with underground stations serving as bunkers. But the airstrike alert in the city was lifted at midday as rescuers sought to pull people out of the rubble caused by the strikes.
Demys Shmygal, Ukraine’s prime minister, said Monday that as of 11 a.m. local time, a total of 11 “critical infrastructure” in eight regions had been damaged.
As of Monday afternoon, electricity supplies were cut in Lviv, Poltava, Sumy and Ternopil, Ukraine’s state emergency services said. Electricity was “partially interrupted” in the rest of the country.
The blasts will be accompanied by fears that Putin is seeking to escalate the conflict in Ukraine, after Moscow’s stuttering ground campaign and damage to the Crimean Bridge dealt a blow to the Russian president.
Putin held an operational meeting of his Security Council on Monday, a day after calling the explosions at the Crimean bridge a “terrorist attack” and saying the organizers and executors were “Ukrainian special services”.
Kyiv has not claimed responsibility for the explosion of the massive 19-kilometre (about 12-mile) bridge, which was built after Moscow annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014, an annexation seen by the West as illegal. The crossing was opened by Putin himself in 2018, and the Ukrainian reaction to the explosion was joyful and triumphant.
The Russian-appointed leader of annexed Crimea Sergei Aksyonov said he had ‘good news’ on Monday, saying Russia’s approaches to what it calls its special military operation in Ukraine ‘have changed’ .
“I have been saying since the first day of the special military operation that if such actions to destroy the enemy’s infrastructure had been taken every day, we would have finished everything by May and the Kyiv regime would have been defeated,” he said. he added.
Monday’s blasts reverberated across central and western Ukraine, far from battlefields in the northeast, east and south, where a powerful Ukrainian counteroffensive liberated towns and pushed back Russian troops in recent weeks.
Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence Agency said Russia had been planning Monday’s missile attacks since early last week, before the explosion at the bridge. Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said the strikes showed Putin was “desperate because of battlefield defeats and is using missile terror to try to change the tempo of the war in his favor”.
“They are trying to wipe us out and wipe us off the face of the earth,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Telegram on Monday as the scale of the attacks became clear. “That’s all, in a nutshell. They are trying to massacre our people who are sleeping at home in Zaporizhzhia. They are trying to kill people who are going to work in Dnipro and Kyiv.”
“Across Ukraine, the sirens of air raids will not stop. The rockets continue to strike. Unfortunately, there are dead and injured. I ask you: do not leave your shelters. Stay safe and take care of your families. be strong,” added Zelensky.
Ukraine’s Western allies doubled their support for Kyiv after the strikes, with EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell Fontelles tweeting that “additional EU military support is on the way”.
US President Joe Biden said Monday’s strikes “once again demonstrate the utter brutality of Mr. Putin’s illegal war against the people of Ukraine.”
“These attacks only reinforce our commitment to stand with the people of Ukraine for as long as it takes,” Biden wrote in a statement. “Alongside our allies and partners, we will continue to impose costs on Russia for its aggression, hold Putin and Russia accountable for its atrocities and war crimes, and provide necessary support to Ukrainian forces to defend their country and their freedom.”
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called the attacks “a further unacceptable escalation of war and, as always, civilians are paying the highest price.”
The G7 group of nations will hold an emergency meeting by videoconference on Tuesday, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s office confirmed to CNN, and Zelensky said on Twitter that he would speak at the meeting.