Russia launches overnight drone and missile barrage across Ukraine, striking energy sites in Kyiv and Odesa
Russia attacked Ukraine overnight with a wave of strike drones and ballistic and cruise missiles aimed at energy infrastructure, hitting the capital Kyiv, the surrounding region, the Black Sea port of Odesa and parts of central Ukraine, according to the Ukrainian military and local officials.
- Advertisement -
Air raid sirens sounded nationwide before dawn as a series of blasts echoed across Kyiv around 4 a.m. local time. “The enemy is attacking the capital with ballistic weapons,” Tymur Tkachenko, head of Kyiv’s military administration, said on Telegram, urging residents to remain in shelters.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said two wounded people — a woman and a child — were taken to hospitals from the suburbs after the strikes. In the wider Kyiv region, at least one person was injured and damage was reported in five districts, where more than a dozen houses were hit, regional Governor Mykola Kalashnyk said on Telegram. Tkachenko added that a fire broke out on the roof of a residential building amid the attacks as emergency crews fanned out across the city in temperatures near minus 10C (14F).
In Odesa, Governor Oleh Kiper said a night-time drone assault targeted the region’s energy infrastructure, sparking fires that were later extinguished. The Ukrainian air force widened its alert to cover the entire country during the barrage, citing the threat of incoming missiles.
The latest strikes continue a winter campaign that has zeroed in on Ukraine’s power stations, energy transmission lines and the gas sector — a tactic that Kyiv says seeks to sap civilian resilience and strain the country’s defenses. Moscow has said it is trying to degrade Ukraine’s ability to wage war.
The bombardment prompted heightened vigilance far from the front lines. Poland’s Operational Command said it scrambled jets after detecting “long-range aviation of the Russian Federation conducting strikes on the territory of Ukraine,” a routine measure when large-scale Russian launches pose potential airspace risks near NATO borders.
Hours earlier in Lviv, a western city near Poland that rarely sees deadly attacks, explosions ripped through a central shopping street around midnight after police responded to a reported break-in. A policewoman was killed and 15 people were injured, Mayor Andriy Sadovyi said, calling it “an act of terrorism” without providing details on suspected perpetrators.
Ukraine nears the war’s four-year mark on Tuesday, with front lines shifting under grinding pressure. Russia occupies close to a fifth of Ukrainian territory and continues to push in the eastern Donbas region despite heavy losses and repeated Ukrainian strikes on logistics hubs, according to Ukrainian officials.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said Friday that Ukraine is “definitely not losing” and that victory remains the goal. He said Ukrainian forces have clawed back about 300 square kilometers in recent counterattacks — which, if confirmed, would mark Kyiv’s most significant advances since 2023. Zelensky also linked the progress to sweeping outages of Starlink internet terminals across the front, saying the service was shut down by owner Elon Musk following a Ukrainian request and that the move enabled the push.
On the diplomatic track, the United States is pushing both sides to end the war, brokering several rounds of talks in recent weeks without a clear breakthrough, officials have said. Zelensky said on X that he plans consultations with European leaders in the coming days and wants deeper involvement from Middle Eastern states and Turkey.
As crews in Kyiv and Odesa worked to restore services and assess damage from the latest strikes, authorities warned residents to expect further air alerts and to conserve power where possible. The intensified barrage underscores the continued vulnerability of Ukraine’s energy grid and the high stakes of a winter campaign entering its fourth year.
By Abdiwahab Ahmed
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.
