Russia launched a barrage of missiles and drones across Ukraine overnight, killing 12 people and wounding more than a dozen, authorities said, as strikes hit apartment blocks and critical energy and rail infrastructure from Kharkiv to Kyiv.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia fired 29 missiles and 480 drones, several of which targeted power and railway facilities. He urged Kyiv’s allies to sustain military support, saying, “Russia has not abandoned its attempts to destroy Ukraine’s residential and critical infrastructure.”
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The heaviest toll came in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, where officials said a ballistic missile destroyed a five-story apartment building, killing 10 people. Mayor Igor Terekhov said the dead included two women and their two children. Rescue crews worked through the rubble as several people were believed trapped.
Elsewhere, one person was killed in the eastern Dnipropetrovsk region and three people were wounded in the capital, Kyiv, according to local authorities. In the northern Sumy region bordering Russia, a 24-year-old man died when a drone struck his car, officials said.
A nationwide air raid alert sounded during the night. Poland’s air force said it scrambled military aircraft to protect its airspace in regions bordering Ukraine, a standard response to large-scale Russian strikes.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said it carried out a “massive high-precision strike” against what it described as military targets, and it routinely denies striking civilians or civilian infrastructure. The Russian army also said earlier it had intercepted more than 120 Ukrainian drones overnight. In Russian-occupied Kherson, Moscow-installed authorities said one person was killed and four wounded in a Ukrainian drone attack.
Zelensky said he briefed French President Emmanuel Macron by phone on the consequences of the strikes and stressed the urgency of unlocking a 90 billion euros European Union aid package for Ukraine as well as the next round of sanctions against Russia, which are currently blocked by Hungary.
The attacks come amid intensifying pressure on Ukraine’s air defenses. Kyiv has warned that a prolonged conflict in the Middle East could complicate deliveries of U.S.-made air defense missiles. Ukraine is facing a shortage of costly U.S. PAC-3 interceptor ammunition, and Zelensky has proposed exchanging Ukraine’s drone interceptors for additional missile supplies. He has also suggested sending Ukrainian drone specialists to help shield Washington’s Gulf allies from Iranian drones.
Ukrainian officials say delays in missile supplies over the winter left civil infrastructure more exposed, enabling repeated Russian strikes that deprived hundreds of thousands of people of heat and power in freezing conditions.
The overnight barrage followed a recent prisoner exchange between Moscow and Kyiv in which each side returned 500 captives, according to both governments. That swap aligned with understandings from the latest round of talks in Geneva, though negotiations have since stalled amid a lack of concrete progress and the shifting global focus prompted by the Middle East war.
Ukraine’s government has warned that Russia is escalating combined missile-and-drone attacks to degrade the country’s energy system ahead of any expected spring offensives. The latest strikes again targeted urban centers and logistics nodes, complicating repairs and stretching emergency services even as crews race to restore power and heat.
With air defense stocks under strain and European aid packages awaiting approval, Kyiv’s ability to blunt future large-scale barrages may increasingly depend on the speed of Western resupply and the political will of allies to maintain sanctions pressure on Moscow.
By Abdiwahab Ahmed
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.
