Russia sends massive strike into Ukraine

KYIV, Ukraine — Russia launched a large-scale air attack against Ukraine on Monday, Ukrainian and Russian officials said, pounding several regions with missiles that killed at least four people, wounded more than 30 others and heavily damaged residential buildings and industrial sites.

Air raid alerts blared across the country from about 6 a.m. after the Ukrainian Air Force reported the takeoff of nearly 20 Russian fighter jets it said fired more than 50 cruise, ballistic and hypersonic missiles. The tactics appeared to be in keeping with Moscow’s strategy of overwhelming Ukrainian air defenses with waves of different types of aerial weapons.

Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s top commander, said his forces had intercepted about a third of the missiles, suggesting many had slipped through. “Critical and civilian infrastructure, industrial and military facilities have been attacked,” he said in a statement.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said it had targeted “Ukrainian military-industrial complex facilities.”

Although the exact targets of the attack and the scale of the damage were not immediately clear, the assault came as Russia has stepped up its airstrikes against Ukraine in recent days, in what appears to be a strategy to degrade Ukrainian industrial and military capabilities and to wear down Ukrainian morale as the war drags on.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine said last week Russia had launched some 300 missiles and more than 200 attack drones against his country in attacks around the New Year. The United Nations said Saturday 120 civilians had been killed across Ukraine and nearly 480 others injured since Dec. 29.

Ihor Klymenko, Ukraine’s interior minister, said the attack Monday had targeted regions across the country, from Khmelnytskyi in the west to Kharkiv in the northeast, adding rescue workers were trying to pull people from under the rubble.

Unlike previous attacks, the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, was not hit Monday. That might be because the city is well protected by powerful air defense systems, including U.S.-designed Patriot batteries.

But Ukraine’s lack of air defense systems means it has to juggle resources between the front line and cities far from the fighting. As a result, some cities, such as Kryvyi Rih in the southeastern Dnipropetrovsk region, which was attacked Monday, are less well defended and are easier targets for Moscow.