At least ten people were killed in a Russian attack against Ukraine on Sunday using cruise missiles, ballistic missiles and drones, which prompted neighbouring Poland to mobilise its air force.
The overnight attack — the biggest launched against Ukraine since August — targeted energy infrastructure in Kyiv and other major cities, causing widespread disruption of the power network amid low temperatures with the advancing winter.
“Another massive attack on the power system is under way. The enemy is attacking electricity generation and transmission facilities throughout Ukraine,” Herman Halushchenko, the Ukrainian energy minister, wrote on Facebook.
Four adults and two children were also injured in the drone strike on Mykolaiv
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A firefighter works to extinguish flames in Mykolaiv
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President Zelensky said Russia had fired 120 missiles and 90 drones, hitting infrastructure and resulting in several civilian casualties.
Andrii Sybiha, Ukraine’s foreign minister, appeared to suggest that the attack demonstrated Kremlin contempt for attempts by Olaf Scholz, Germany’s chancellor, to engage President Putin in dialogue over ending the war.
“This is the real answer of the war criminal Putin to all those who have recently called and visited him,” Sybiha said.
Scholz spoke to Putin by phone on Friday for the first time in two years, prompting Ukraine’s government to accuse the German leader of appeasement.
On Sunday Scholz said there had been no sign in his hour-long call with Putin that the Russian leader’s position had changed. However, he insisted it had been a necessary step to ensure that Putin was in touch with Europe as well as the incoming Trump administration in the US.
Olaf Scholz’s call with Putin was condemned by Ukraine as appeasement
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Sunday’s attack was one of Russia’s biggest aerial assaults on Ukraine since the beginning of its full-scale invasion in February 2022, Sybiha added.
Poland, a member of Nato that shares an eastern border with Ukraine, said that as a security measure its air force had “activated all available forces and resources at his disposal, the on-duty fighter pairs were scrambled, and the ground-based air defence and radar reconnaissance systems reached the highest state of readiness”.
Donald Tusk, the Polish prime minister, said that “telephone diplomacy” could not replace “real support”.
The casualties in Ukraine included two women killed in a drone strike on Mykolaiv, where four adults and two children were also injured.
The extent of the damage to infrastructure was still being assessed on Sunday morning.
In the capital, Kyiv, a series of powerful blasts was heard during the night and air defences attempted to stop the barrage.
People take shelter inside a metro station in Kyiv
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Firefighters in a residential area near the capital
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A popular Telegram channel in Odesa said that most of its residents had been left without electricity, heating and water supply as a result of strikes. Gennady Trukhanov, the mayor, said hospitals and heating plants had been switched to generators.
There were other strikes in western and central regions of the country.
Russia’s defence ministry claimed it had hit all its targets in an aerial assault on “essential energy infrastructure supporting the Ukrainian military-industrial complex”.
Ukraine’s air force said it had knocked down 102 Russian missiles and 42 drones.
A video released by a Ukrainian social media account, United 24, showed a female soldier firing a ground-to-air interceptor during Sunday’s attack.
“Soldier Natalia Hrabarchuk destroyed a Russian missile with an Igla MANPADS during a massive Russian attack today,” the post was captioned on X. “Remarkably, this was her first combat launch, and it resulted in a direct hit. Before joining the military, Natalia worked as a kindergarten teacher.”
Over the weekend Russia also cut off its gas exports to Austria, which alongside Hungary and Slovakia is one of a handful of European states that remain heavily reliant on Moscow for the fuel.
Usually about 80 per cent of the country’s gas is piped in by Gazprom, the Russian state-backed energy conglomerate, although at times the proportion has been as high as 98 per cent.
The ostensible reason for the measure is a legal dispute between Gazprom and OMV, a large Austrian energy company, over about €230 million in penalty payments for late deliveries.
Karl Nehammer, the Austrian chancellor, insisted that his country would not be “blackmailed” or “brought to our knees” by Putin.
He sought to reassure the public that Austria’s gas storage facilities were already more than 90 per cent full ahead of the winter and alternative supplies could be sourced from Norway or liquefied natural gas deliveries by way of Italy or Germany.