The early-morning attacks were carried out as Kyiv prepares to launch a counteroffensive to try to retake Russian-occupied territory.
Russia hurled missiles at cities across Ukraine as people slept early on Friday, killing at least 12 people in the first large-scale airstrikes in nearly two months.
The early-morning attacks were carried out
as Kyiv prepares to launch a counteroffensive to try to retake
Russian-occupied territory.
In the central city of Uman, firefighters
battled a raging blaze at a residential apartment building that had been struck
on an upper floor. At least 10 people were killed, including two children, and
nine were taken to the hospital, regional governor Ihor Taburets said.
Rescue workers clambered through a huge
pile of the smoldering rubble, carrying out a body bag away on a stretcher. A
grown man wearing a face mask sobbed as he watched, and a woman came to comfort
him.
“At first the windows were blown out, then
came the explosion,” a resident of the apartment building who gave her name
only as Olga said as rescue workers dug through the debris. “Everything flew
out.”
In the southeastern city of Dnipro, a
missile struck a house, killing a two-year-old child and a 31-year-old woman,
regional governor Serhiy Lysak said. Three people were also wounded in the
attack.
The Ukrainian military said it had shot
down 21 out of 23 cruise missiles fired by Russia.
“This Russian terror must face a fair
response from Ukraine and the world,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote in a
Telegram post alongside images of the wreckage. “And it will.”
It was not clear what Russia was targeting
in Friday’s attacks though it has regularly struck civilian infrastructure,
particularly energy facilities throughout the winter.
Beginning late last year Russia launched
such attacks roughly weekly, though they had tapered off as winter ended, with
Western countries saying Moscow had used up much of its long range missile
arsenal in a failed bid to freeze Ukrainian cities.
Moscow says it does not deliberately target
civilians, but its airstrikes and shelling have killed thousands of people and
devastated cities and towns across Ukraine. Kyiv says strikes on cities far
from the front lines have no military purpose apart from intimidating and harming
civilians, a war crime.
The capital Kyiv was also rocked by
explosions, with officials reporting that air defence units had destroyed 11
missiles and two drones.
Two people were wounded in the town of
Ukrayinka just south of Kyiv, officials said.
Explosions were also reported after
midnight in the central cities of Kremenchuk and Poltava, and in Mykolaiv in
the south, according to the Interfax Ukraine news agency.
The war is coming to a juncture after a
months-long Russian winter offensive that gained little ground despite the
bloodiest fighting so far. Kyiv is preparing a counter-offensive using hundreds
of tanks and armored vehicles sent by the West.
The main focus of fighting has for months
been the eastern city of Bakhmut, as Russia tries to capture remaining parts of
the industrial Donbas area that it does not yet hold.
Russia holds a swathe of territory across
southern and southeastern Ukraine, and seized and annexed the Crimea peninsula
in 2014.
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