Air and missile strikes pummel Ukrainian cities overnight

Buildings destroyed by Russian strikes in Ukrainian cities (Screengrab| Twitter: @ZelenskyyUa)

Buildings destroyed by Russian strikes in Ukrainian cities (Screengrab| Twitter: @ZelenskyyUa)

Russia launched a huge wave of missile and air strikes on targets in several Ukrainian cities, including the capital, Kyiv, last night in what Ukraine’s defence minister called the “most massive air attack of the war.” 

At least 34 civilians were killed and 160 injured as a result of the strikes on Friday night.  More strikes destroyed residential buildings in Kyiv, Lviv, Kharkiv and other cities in the west and south of the country, earlier on Friday. 

Nine people were killed in Kyiv. A metro station that was acting as an air raid shelter was amongst the targets destroyed by the attack

Ukrainian officials said that a shopping centre and maternity hospital in Dnipro were also hit. 

Three people were killed and 26 injured, including two children and a pregnant woman, after three rockets hit residential buildings in Odesa. 

The Ukrainian air force said a large number of missiles and drones had been shot down, but the country’s air defences were overwhelmed by the volume of ordinance used on Friday.

Kyiv’s defence minister, Rustem Umerov, described the strikes as the “most massive air attack of this war,” in which 18 strategic bombers are thought to have been used. General Valerii Zaluzhnyi, head of the Ukrainian army said that infrastructure, industrial and military facilities had been targeted. It has also been suggested that defence facilities, some connected to missile and drone production, were the main targets.

On social media Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that Russia had used “nearly every type of weapon in its arsenal.” “Russian terror must and will lose,”  he said.

The Polish armed forces said an unknown airborne object, which they later identified to be a Russian missile, had travelled 40km into the country’s airspace from the direction of Ukraine on Friday evening. The incursion lasted less than three minutes, according to authorities in Poland. Russia has denied the incident, retorting that Warsaw had provided no evidence of a missile entering its airspace.

On Saturday, Russia claimed to have destroyed "dozens" of missiles and drones targeting the Belgorod, Bryansk, Oryol, Kursk and Moscow regions in what is thought to be retaliatory strikes by the Armed Forces of Ukraine. One person was killed and four injured, according to Russian officials.