Russia unleashes massive drone and missile attack on Ukraine

(Russian Defence Ministry Press Service/AP)

Russian forces unleashed a massive drone and missile barrage on Ukraine early on Monday, and at least three people were reported killed in the attack, which appeared to target energy infrastructure.

The attack began at around midnight and continued after dawn in what appeared to be Russia’s biggest attack against Ukraine in weeks.

According to the Ukrainian air force, there were multiple groups of Russian drones moving towards eastern, northern, southern, and central regions of Ukraine, followed by multiple cruise and ballistic missiles.

Explosions were heard in the capital, Kyiv, and power and water supplies in the city have been disrupted, the city’s mayor, Vitalii Klitschko, said.

A tractor clears the rubble after a Russian strike on the Sapphire hotel in Kramatorsk, in the Donetsk region of Ukraine, on Sunday (Evgeniy Maloletka/AP)

Ihor Polishchuk, mayor of Ukraine’s western city of Lutsk, said a multi-storey residential building and an unspecified infrastructure object were hit and one person was killed.

Another person was killed in the central Dnipropetrovsk region, where the attack sparked multiple fires, regional head Serhii Lysak said.

One person was also killed in the south-eastern, partially occupied region of Zaporizhzhia, regional head Ivan Fedorov said.

Ukraine’s private energy company, DTEK, introduced emergency blackouts, saying in an online statement that “energy workers throughout the country work 24/7 to restore light in the homes of Ukrainians”.

In neighbouring Poland, the military said Polish and Nato air defences were activated in the eastern part of the country as a result of the attack.