Stay informed with free updates
Simply sign up for the War in Ukraine myFT Digest – delivered straight to your inbox.
Central kyiv was rocked by explosions on Monday as Ukrainian air defenses intercepted incoming Russian missiles and drones in a massive aerial bombardment of targets across the country.
The Ukrainian Air Force reported that 17 Russian bombers launched high-powered missiles while dozens of attack drones targeted cities and critical infrastructure across Ukraine. The attack began around midnight and continued into the early morning.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia had launched “more than 100 missiles of different types and about 100 (attack) drones.”
“The enemy is terrorizing the whole of Ukraine with missiles again. The energy sector is in the crosshairs,” Energy Minister German Galushchenko wrote on Facebook.
The Financial Times witnessed two explosions from air defences engaging projectiles over the Ukrainian capital at around 9am local time.
The Russian Defense Ministry confirmed on Monday that it had launched a “massive precision-guided weapons strike on critical energy infrastructure” in Ukraine.
Serhiy Popko, head of the kyiv regional military administration, urged residents of the Ukrainian capital to stay in air raid shelters until the air raid alert is lifted.
“Energy workers are working to restore lighting. Keep calm and stay in shelters until the air raid alarm goes off,” the Kiev municipality told residents. Water supplies have also been cut off in some neighborhoods.
The strikes also caused serious damage to the Kiev hydroelectric power station, hitting its engine room, according to the Ukrainian news agency Unian. It released a video showing a section of the highway above the dam strewn with rubble and partly on fire.
Explosions were reported by authorities in at least 15 regions, with civilian deaths reported in the western city of Lutsk and in the southeastern Dnieper region.
Moscow has targeted Ukrainian energy facilities, causing power outages across the country. These attacks have deprived the country of more than 9 GW of electricity generation capacity, about half of last winter’s peak energy consumption.
Ukraine’s largest private energy supplier, DTEK, said on Monday that it and all suppliers had received orders from the national electricity transmission system operator to impose emergency power cuts across the country.
The city of Zhytomyr, which has a population of around 250,000, was left without electricity and water after the region’s power company ordered an emergency shutdown following the attacks, according to local media.
Ukraine had been expecting a new wave of airstrikes in recent days, with the US embassy warning last week of “an increased risk of Russian drone and missile attacks, day and night, across Ukraine, on the occasion of Ukraine’s Independence Day on August 24.”
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba wrote on X that Russian aggression “must be strongly condemned and punished with concrete measures by the international community.” In particular, he called on Kiev’s partners to lift restrictions on the use of long-range weapons supplied by the West to strike “legitimate military targets on Russian territory.”
Ukraine has been lobbying the UK, US and France to be able to use Storm Shadow, Scalp and Atacms missiles against Moscow’s military inside Russia, but so far these countries have maintained their position that these weapons should only be used within Ukraine’s borders.
“America, Britain, France and other partners have the power” to stop Russian airstrikes, Zelenskyy said.
Kuleba also called on Western allies to use their air defense capabilities to shoot down missiles and drones near their airspace. Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski said Warsaw was studying the idea but it would require NATO approval, which the alliance has been reluctant to do.
The attacks come as Ukrainian ground forces have expanded their incursion into Russia’s western Kursk region, which began on August 6.
kyiv’s troops captured more than 1,200 square kilometers of Russian territory during their operation and captured hundreds of soldiers, including young conscripts. Moscow and kyiv exchanged 115 prisoners each over the weekend.
Long-range Ukrainian drones struck two apartment buildings in southern Russia on Monday, apparently targeting a nearby military airbase. Video footage shows a drone exploding on the side of an apartment building in the city of Saratov at dawn. Four people were injured, the state-run RIA news agency said.
A drone also damaged a residential building in the town of Engels, and drones were reportedly shot down in several other Russian regions, mainly on the border with Ukraine. The Russian Defense Ministry said it intercepted 20 drones overnight.
