Russia unleashed rockets and drones throughout Ukraine early Friday, damaging schools, hospitals and homes in what officials in the country said was one of the largest aerial barrages since the start of the war.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said a majority of the some 110 rockets fired during the attack were intercepted.
Russia used “almost everything it has in its arsenal” in the attack, including ballistic and cruise missiles, Zelenskyy said.
Ukrainians across the country were woken up by the blasts, which killed at least 18 people and injured more than 130 injured, according to officials. Emergency crews rushed to rescue people from under the rubble and prosecutors launched a war crimes investigation into the attacks.
Friday’s attacks come just days after a Ukrainian strike in Russian-occupied Crimea, in which a Russian landing ship was reported to have been damaged.
In the capital Kyiv, NBC News heard loud explosions throughout the city in the early hours of the morning, and local authorities said residential buildings, a metro station and a business center were hit. At least four people were killed and 30 injured, head of the Kyiv City Military Administration, Serhii Popko, said.
In the second-largest city of Kharkiv in Ukraine’s northeast, local authorities reported more than 20 missile hits, resulting in damage to warehouses and a transport depot, and leaving three people killed and 13 injured, region’s governor Oleh Syniehubov said.
In the far-western city of Lviv, where missile attacks are more rare, authorities reported multiple explosions throughout the morning, damaging residential buildings, three schools and a kindergarten. One person was killed and another 15 injured, city mayor Andrii Sadovyy said.
In the central city of Dnipro, six people died and 28 were injured as local officials said a shopping center and a maternity hospital were damaged.
The southern port of Odesa was hit by drones and missiles overnight, resulting in four dead and 22 injured, and damage to residential buildings and a school, according to local authorities.
The Russian defense ministry said Friday it carried out 50 strikes with “precision weapons and unmanned aerial vehicles” on Ukrainian military targets this week. It did not say anything about the civilian targets hit across Ukraine on Friday.
Moscow has denied hitting civilian infrastructure throughout the war, despite evidence of daily civilian casualties and entire Ukrainian cities in ruins.
Neighboring Poland, a NATO member, also reported an “unidentified air object” entering from the direction of Ukraine, but it was not immediately clear what it was or whether it landed inside its territory. A stray missile struck a Polish village near the border with Ukraine last year, killing two people, in an incident that raised fears of a major escalation of the Kremlin’s war.
Moscow has felt on the front foot in the war after Kyiv’s Western-backed counteroffensive had failed to achieve major breakthroughs this year and Ukraine’s allies are showing signs of growing reluctance to support its war effort indefinitely. It has spurred talks about what a possible ceasefire or even a peace agreement could look like, although Kyiv has so far shut down any possibility of talks with Russia.
“Today, millions of Ukrainians awoke to the loud sound of explosions,” Ukraine’s foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba wrote on X. “I wish those sounds of explosions in Ukraine could be heard all around the world.”
They signify Russia’s true intention, he said — not willingness to negotiate. “These sounds are what Russia really has to say,” he added.
While Kyiv is still waiting for Congress to greenlight a $61 billion aid package proposed by President Joe Biden, Russian President Vladimir Putin has appeared more confident than ever in his army, which he said has been improving its positions along the entire frontline. Meanwhile, he has sought to propel the narrative that the support for Ukraine is waning, as he said Western “freebies” for Kyiv are coming to an end.
His top diplomat echoed that sentiment Thursday, saying the West is changing its tactics towards Ukraine.
“There are hints and leaks in the Western media that the West now wants to look for some way out of this situation,” Russia’s foreign minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview with state media, according to a transcript on the foreign ministry’s website.
“They need some way out ‘without losing face’ or a way out that allows you to at least convince yourself that you haven’t ‘lost’ your face,” he added. “I see it this way.”