KYIV: Russia launched a rush-hour barrage of missiles toward Ukraine on Thursday, the day after Kyiv secured Western pledges of dozens of modern battlefield tanks to try to push back the Russian invasion.
Moscow had reacted with fury to the German and American announcements, and has in the past responded to apparent Ukrainian successes with air strikes that have left millions without light, heat or water.
The Ukrainian military said it had shot down all 24 drones sent overnight by Russia, including 15 around the capital, with no damage reported.
But soon afterwards, air raid alarms sounded across Ukraine as people were heading to work, and senior officials said air defenses were shooting down incoming missiles.
In the capital, crowds of people took cover in underground metro stations, and a loud explosion was heard.
DTEK, Ukraine’s largest private energy producer, said it was conducting emergency power shutdowns in Kyiv, the surrounding region and also the regions of Odesa and Dnipropetrovsk because of the imminent danger.
Kyiv’s military administration said more than 15 missiles fired at Kyiv had been shot down, but urged people to remain on shelters.
“Missiles are flying inside the territory of Ukraine. At least two northwest through Mykolaiv region,” Vitaly Kim, governor of the Mykolaiv region in southern Ukraine, said on the Telegram messaging app.
An air force spokesman said impacts had been registered in the central Vinnytsia region.
Western analysts say the attacks on Ukraine’s cities are more an attempt to break morale than a strategic campaign.
Both sides are expected to mount new ground offensives come the spring, and Ukraine has been seeking hundreds of modern tanks in the hope of using them to break Russian defensive lines and recapture occupied territory in the south and east.
Both Ukraine and Russia have so far relied primarily on Soviet-era T-72 tanks.
“The key now is speed and volumes. Speed in training our forces, speed in supplying tanks to Ukraine. The numbers in tank support,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his nightly video address on Wednesday.
“We have to form such a ‘tank fist’, such a ‘fist of freedom’.”
