Russia launched one of its largest recent aerial barrages against Ukraine overnight, firing waves of drones and missiles at power plants, substations and rail lines across multiple regions, injuring dozens and setting off fires, officials said.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia sent 420 attack drones and 39 missiles — including 11 ballistic missiles — in a coordinated strike aimed at the country’s energy sector and other critical infrastructure. “Last night, Russia once again waged war on critical infrastructure and ordinary residential buildings,” he said on Telegram.
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Ukraine’s air force said it shot down 374 drones and 32 missiles. Even so, five ballistic missiles and 46 drones pierced defenses and struck 32 sites nationwide. Zelensky said children were among the injured and damage was recorded in eight regions.
The latest attack continued a months-long Russian campaign to degrade Ukraine’s energy grid ahead of winter’s end, with repeated salvos designed to destroy generating capacity and substations, forcing rolling blackouts and costly emergency repairs. Officials reported gas facilities in the Poltava region and electricity substations in the Kyiv and Dnipro regions were among the targets.
Strikes also hit the country’s transport lifelines. Railway infrastructure in the front-line regions of Donetsk, Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia came under attack, a deputy prime minister said, threatening logistics routes critical to military resupply and humanitarian deliveries.
Regional authorities reported widespread damage and injuries from falling debris and direct hits. In the Kharkiv region, at least 14 people were injured, including a 7-year-old child, after the city was targeted by two missiles and 17 drones, Governor Oleh Syniehubov said. In Zaporizhzhia, Governor Ivan Fedorov said at least 10 people were hurt as drones damaged 19 apartment blocks. Photographs he posted showed smashed storefronts, apartments with gaping holes and private homes reduced to rubble.
Two people were injured in Kryvyi Rih, where 10 residential houses, a kindergarten and administrative buildings were damaged, officials said. In Kyiv, authorities reported that debris from intercepted weapons damaged several buildings across three districts.
The scale of the assault underscored Ukraine’s reliance on layered air defenses — from mobile teams using machine guns and anti-drone rifles to Western-supplied systems — to blunt Russia’s campaign against the energy grid. While interception rates remain high, officials warn that any successful strikes can have cascading effects, from local power outages to disrupted rail service that complicates evacuations and aid deliveries.
Even as emergency crews worked to restore electricity and clear debris, Kyiv pointed to renewed diplomatic activity. Zelensky said he spoke by phone with U.S. President Donald Trump and that the next session of U.S.-Ukraine-Russia talks in March should pave the way for a meeting of the three leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin. He said such a high-level summit was the only way to tackle the most complex issues and move toward ending the war, and that Trump supported that sequencing.
The call came ahead of a meeting of Ukrainian and U.S. officials in Geneva focused on reconstruction planning. Ukrainian, U.S. and Russian officials have held three trilateral rounds in the Swiss city in recent weeks, though participants have reported no breakthrough. Kyiv and Moscow remain far apart on core questions, particularly over territory in Ukraine’s east, even as battlefield dynamics and infrastructure strikes continue to shape the costs and risks for both sides.
For now, Ukraine’s immediate priority is stabilizing the grid and repairing rail lines and homes battered in the latest wave — damage that underscores how civilians remain squarely in the path of Russia’s air war.
By Abdiwahab Ahmed
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.
