As many as 81 cruise and ballistic missiles were fired by Russia on Thursday, blasting targets across Ukraine with several weapons, including its newest hypersonic missiles.
The strikes included six of the new Russian missiles known as Kinzhals, the most Russia has used in a single wave since the start of the war last February, The New York Times reported citing Ukraine’s Air Force.
These missiles travel at more than five times the speed of sound, and can maneuver in flight, making them all but impossible to shoot down, the report said.
“It was a massive strike, from multiple directions, firing from the air and sea and with kamikaze drones,” Yuriy Ihnat, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s Air Force, said.
This large-scale missile attack came a week after a cross-border raid into the Bryansk region of southern Russia by a paramilitary group operating from Ukraine.
Earlier, Moscow has called the attack an act of terrorism that left two people dead. On Thursday, Russia’s defence ministry said that it had used high-precision weapons including hypersonic missiles to carry out a “massive retaliatory strike” against Ukraine because of that raid.
Amid the biggest reported missile attack on Ukraine in weeks, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said that Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant had to switch to backup generators once again, after losing all power.
This is the first time the site has lost all power since 23 November 2022 and follows reports of missile strikes across Ukraine overnight.
In a statement, Director General of UN’s atomic energy agency Rafael Mariano Grossi pointed out that this is the sixth time that ZNPP has lost all off-site power and has had to operate in this emergency mode.
“Let me remind you – this is the largest nuclear power station in Europe. What are we doing? How can we sit here in this room this morning and allow this to happen? This cannot go on," he added.
Meanwhile, UN Deputy Spokesperson Farhan Haq, told journalists at UN Headquarters that Russian missiles also struck civilian infrastructure in many parts of Ukraine, including the capital, Kyiv.
“The strikes – the first of this type in more than a month – hit power infrastructure across the country. In Kyiv, nearly 40 per cent of the people have been left without heat, while 15 per cent of homes and businesses lost access to electricity, according to the authorities”, Haq reported.
In the city of Kharkiv, he said 1.4 million people now lacked heating, electricity and water. “In Kherson, the local authorities and our partners on the ground tell us that at least three civilians were killed at a bus stop in the city centre, which was understood to be hit by a missile.”
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