Ukrainians have been bracing for a major attack on the hobbled power system for weeks, fearing crippling damage to the grid that would cause long blackouts and build psychological pressure at a critical moment in the war Russia launched in February 2022.
The strikes, which prompted emergency power cuts in numerous regions, came after the US presidential election victory of Donald Trump, whose pledge to end the war without saying how has raised the prospect of a looming push to hold negotiations.
Russia launched one of the largest air attacks: drones and missiles against peaceful cities, sleeping civilians, critical infrastructure. This is war criminal Putin's true response to all those who called and visited him recently. We need peace through strength, not appeasement.— Andrii Sybiha 🇺🇦 (@andrii_sybiha) November 17, 2024
"Russia launched one of the largest air attacks: drones and missiles against peaceful cities, sleeping civilians, critical infrastructure," Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha wrote on X.
Air defences could be heard engaging drones over the capital in the night, and a series of powerful blasts rang out across the city centre as the missile attack was under way in the morning.
Kyiv's air force said the military had destroyed 104 out of 120 missiles fired and 42 out of 90 drones launched by Russia.
Russia's defence ministry said it had launched a massive strike on energy facilities that supply Ukraine's military-industrial complex.
"Severe damage to Ukraine's energy system, including to DTEK power stations," said Maxim Timchenko, CEO of DTEK which is Ukraine's largest private energy provider.
After repeated Russian attacks on the power grid, officials reveal little about the state of the energy infrastructure and seldom release detailed information on the outcome of strikes.
Officials confirmed damage to "critical infrastructure" or reported power cuts in regions spanning from Volyn, Rivne and Lviv in the west to the southeast Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhia regions.
Over the past week, the aggressor used nearly 140 missiles of various types, more than 900 guided aerial bombs, and over 600 strike drones. Today, our F-16 pilots shot down approximately 10 aerial targets. Efforts to address the consequences of the combined attack on our… — Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зелен�ький (@ZelenskyyUa) pic.twitter.com/rpRNJmIPInNovember 17, 2024
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the "massive combined attack targeted all regions of Ukraine".
In Mykolaiv in the south, two people were killed in an overnight drone attack, the governor said.
Two people died and three were wounded in a strike on a rail depot in the Dnipropetrovsk region, rail authorities said.
In Lviv region, on the border with Poland, a woman in a car was killed, the governor said.
Another two people were killed in the Odesa region.
The huge wave of strikes took place as the war approached this week's 1000th day since Russia's full-scale invasion.
Russia's latest wave of air strikes across Ukraine is its largest in almost three months. (AP PHOTO)
Russia last conducted a major missile strike on Kyiv on August 26, when officials said it fired a salvo of more than 200 drones and missiles across the country, killing seven people.
NATO member Poland, which borders Ukraine to the west, said it had scrambled its air force inside its airspace as a security precaution during the attack, which it said used cruise missiles, ballistic missiles and drones.
Russia's onslaught piles more pressure on Ukraine as Moscow's troops notch up their fastest battlefield gains in the east since 2022 in their effort to seize the entire industrial Donbas region despite taking heavy losses, according to Kyiv and the West.
Ukrainian troops are meanwhile trying to hold an area of land that they seized in Russia's Kursk region in August, something Kyiv has said could serve as a bargaining chip further down the line.
Sybiha said the strike appeared to be Moscow's "true response" to leaders interacting with President Vladimir Putin, an apparent swipe at German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who called the Russian leader on Friday for the first time since late 2022.
While Scholz urged Putin to pull his troops out of Ukraine where they occupy a fifth of the country, Kyiv said the call reduced the isolation of the Kremlin leader.
