Russia launches ‘massive’ overnight strike on nine Ukrainian cities

Kyiv was hit by Russian attacks (AP)

Russia has bombarded cities across Ukraine with missiles and drones in an overnight onslaught, with explosions echoed around the capital Kyiv on Thursday morning.

Ukraine is desperately short of US-made Patriot air defence missiles that can counter Russia’s ballistic missiles, and Moscow’s fast-flying jet-powered drones have brought another challenge in the fifth year since the Russian army’s invasion.

Ukrainian officials say Russia builds up missile stocks and launches major attacks every few days, hoping to exhaust Ukrainian defences through the sheer weight of numbers.

In response, Ukraine has hit high-profile targets on Russian soil as the countries inflict mutual destruction.

The Russian defence ministry said its forces carried out a “massive” overnight strike on targets in nine Ukrainian cities.

It described the targets as military-related, including industrial facilities, oil refineries, logistics hubs and port infrastructure.

Civilian areas including apartment blocks suffered damage. The barrage killed a 78-year-old woman in the southern Zaporizhzhia region, with at least nine people reported wounded elsewhere, Ukrainian officials said.

“Russia continues to invest in missiles and in expanding its war, and that means more countermeasures are needed,” Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said on social media, noting promises earlier this week by European countries to provide more air defence help.

“It is important that these (measures) are also supplemented by additional ballistic missile defence packages” through European purchases of weapons from the United States, he said.

Mr Zelensky is due to visit neighbouring Moldova on Thursday to mark its national day commemorating its 1991 declaration of independence from the Soviet Union. Ukraine announced its independence the same year.

Russia’s neighbours in Eastern Europe are concerned its invasion of Ukraine could trigger a wider conflict, and drones flying into its airspace have caused concern.

Moldovan defence chiefs said five drones had breached the country’s airspace overnight, without specifying who launched them.

Ukraine’s air force said it had shot down or suppressed seven Russian ballistic missiles.

Four districts of Kyiv were hit during the night, damaging residential blocks, a school building and a medical facility, though no casualties were reported, city police said.

Russian forces struck industrial facilities as well as energy infrastructure in Ukraine’s central Poltava region, said Vitalii Diakivnych, head of the Poltava regional military administration.

The southern Odesa region also came under a massive Russian attack lasting more than seven hours, according to Oleh Kiper, head of the Odesa regional military administration.

The barrage damaged a 16-story residential building and two educational facilities as well as a grain elevator, he said. Odesa is a key port for Ukraine’s vital exports of grain and other agricultural products.

Meanwhile, Ukraine has also fired hundreds of long-range drones almost nightly at targets in Russia.

Russian defence ministers that air defences shot down 267 Ukrainian drones over 14 Russian regions, illegally annexed Crimea, the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea.

After razing huge warehouses in recent months belonging to Wildberries, Russia’s biggest online retailer, Ukrainian drones are now taking aim at Ozon, the country’s second-largest e-commerce company.

Ozon said its logistics facilities in the cities of Orenburg and Ufa were attacked but neither of the premises caught fire.