On Thursday while people were sleeping, Russia unleashed a massive wave of missile strikes across Ukraine, killing at least six civilians, disrupting electricity, and forcing a nuclear power plant off the grid.
The longest period of calm since Moscow started a campaign to attack Ukraine’s civil infrastructure five months ago was shattered by the first significant volley of missile attacks since mid-February.
One of Moscow’s most valuable weaponry, the tiny Russian arsenal of kinzhal hypersonic cruise missiles, was included in an unprecedented six units, according to Kyiv.
“The occupiers can only terrorise civilians. That’s all they can do. But it won’t help them. They won’t avoid responsibility for everything they have done,” President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a statement, describing strikes that hit infrastructure and residential buildings in ten regions.
In retaliation for a cross-border raid last week on a village in Russia’s Bryansk area, the Russian defense ministry claimed it had launched a “massive retaliatory strike” on Ukrainian infrastructure.
A body was carried by villagers in Zolochiv, in the western Lviv region of Ukraine, over the ruins of a brick home that had been totally destroyed by a missile. At least five individuals were killed there, and one of their bodies was placed in the back of a white van along with two others. In the remains, a dog was curled up on a carpet.
The home was reportedly owned by Oksana Ostapenko’s sister Halyna, whose corpse was still buried beneath the debris alongside two other family members.
