Barrage of attacks on civil targets

Russia has unleashed strategic bombers, killer drones and rockets in a barrage of attacks on Ukrainian targets. The assault comes as a Russian military push that Kyiv says has been brewing for days appeared to pick up pace ahead of the first anniversary of the invasion of Ukraine.

Russian forces have launched 71 cruise missiles, 35 S-300 missiles and seven Shahed drones since late on Thursday, Ukraine’s military chief, Gen Valerii Zaluzhnyi, said.

Ukrainian forces downed 61 cruise missiles and five drones, he added.

The cruise missiles were launched by Russian Tu-95 strategic bombers and from Russian navy ships in the Black Sea, Gen Zaluzhnyi said, while the S-300 missiles were launched from the Belgorod region just inside Russia and the occupied part of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region.

Ukraine’s prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, said Moscow once again targeted the power supply “in another attempt to destroy the Ukrainian energy system and deprive Ukrainians of light, heat, water”.

He added: “We have sustained damage to high-voltage infrastructure and generation in the western, central and eastern regions, which may cause power outages.”

The Kremlin’s forces focused their bombardments on Ukraine’s industrial east, especially the Luhansk and Donetsk provinces, the Ukrainian military said.

Moscow-backed separatists have been fighting Ukrainian forces there since 2014.

But the barrage went further, taking aim at the capital, Kyiv, and Lviv, near Ukraine’s western border with Poland. It also struck critical infrastructure in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city in the north-east.

Seven people were wounded there, two of them seriously, regional governor Oleh Syniehubov said.

Air raid sirens went off across much of the country.

The bombardments could be an effort by Russia to soften up Ukraine’s defences ahead of a ground assault, which Kyiv believes Moscow is planning in the east. There has been little change in battlefield positions for weeks.

Russia launched the full-scale invasion on February 24 2022.

SURVIVOR: A residential building after being hit by a rocket in Kharkiv.