Russia fired around 450 long-range drones and 70 missiles of various types at Ukraine in a major attack overnight, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Tuesday. Ukraine's air force says it intercepted just 38 of those missiles, per the BBC. The bombardment of at least five regions of Ukraine included a record number of 32 ballistic missiles and specifically took aim at the power grid, Zelensky said, as part of Moscow's ongoing campaign to deny civilians light, heating, and running water during the coldest winter in years, per the AP. Private power company DTEK said it was the heaviest barrage on the electricity network this year. At least 10 people were wounded, officials said.
Ukraine's energy chief, Denys Shmyhal, says the targets were "purely civilian," and that the attacks were "another Russian crime against humanity," per the New York Times. The barrage came as NATO chief Mark Rutte visited Kyiv in a show of support, and a day before Russia and Ukraine were due to attend US-brokered talks in the United Arab Emirates on ending the war. "Taking advantage of the coldest days of winter to terrorize people is more important to Russia than diplomacy," Zelensky said, per the AP. Temperatures in Kyiv fell to minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit during the night and stood at minus 3 degrees on Tuesday.
The Ukrainian leader urged allies to send more air defense supplies and bring "maximum pressure" to bear on Russia to end its full-scale invasion, which began on Feb. 24, 2022. In the capital of Kyiv, five people were wounded in the strikes that damaged and set fire to residential buildings, a kindergarten, and a gas station, according to the State Emergency Service. By morning, 1,170 apartment buildings in the capital were without heat, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said. That set back desperate repair operations that had restored power to all but 80 apartment buildings, he said. Russia also struck Ukraine's northeastern Kharkiv region, where injuries were reported, and the southern Odesa region.
The attack also damaged the Hall of Fame at the National Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War, at the foot of the Motherland Monument in Kyiv, Ukrainian Culture Minister Tetyana Berezhna said. Russia has tried to wear down Ukrainians' appetite for the fight by creating hardship for the civilian population living in dark, freezing homes. It has also tried to wreck Ukraine's electricity network, targeting substations, transformers, turbines, and generators at power plants.
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