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Russia fired more than 200 missile and drones across Ukraine overnight and in the early morning, killing seven people, as Moscow targeted the country’s energy grid in an effort to disrupt power supply as winter looms.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s president, said about 120 missiles and 90 drones were launched by Russia and that two people were killed and six wounded in a drone strike on the southern city of Mykolaiv.
It was the biggest missile and drone attack on Ukraine since August and the first major Russian assault since the US election, showing the Kremlin in little mood to compromise after the victory of Donald Trump.
There were reports of attacks on critical infrastructure in the regions of Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk and Rivne in the west as well as in Kriyvi Rih and Vinnytsia in central Ukraine, Odesa in the south and the capital, Kyiv.
Poland and Nato allies scrambled jets to safeguard its airspace in border areas early on Sunday, the country’s operational military command said, returning to their bases about three hours later without apparent incident.
The Ukrainian president described the bombing as the work of “Russian terrorists” and said Russia had fired Kinzhal, Iskander and Zircon missiles as well as Shaheed drones. “Our air defence forces destroyed more than 140 air targets,” he added.
The Ukrainian air force said later the 144 incoming objects were brought down, including 102 of the 120 missiles and 42 of the 90 drones. A further 41 drones were lost, presumed brought down by jamming, and two flew towards Russia or occupied territories.
Andrii Sybiha, the country’s foreign minister, said: “Russia launched one of the largest air attacks: drones and missiles against peaceful cities, sleeping civilians, critical infrastructure.”
Other reports said two rail workers were killed after a depot was hit in Nikopol, while another person was reported dead and two injured in Lviv oblast, according to local officials. Two people were also killed in Odesa, the regional governor announced.
Power cuts were reported around the country though it was unclear how serious the damage was as some outages were deliberate to protect the wider network from surges. It is the eighth time Ukraine’s power grid has been targeted this year, the energy company Dtek said, but the first at the onset of winter.
Several explosions could be heard in Kyiv shortly after 7am, and in the capital’s Pechersk district one woman was reported hospitalised after a residential building was hit by a drone fragment, while a second person was treated on site.
The city’s mayor, Vitalli Klitschko, said rocket fragments and drone debris had also fallen in other parts of the city, but there were no reports of casualties or damage from the incidents.
F-16 fighters, donated from Europe, were scrambled as part of the country’s defence shooting down 10 “aerial targets”, Zelenskyy said, which also involved Soviet-made Sukhoi and MiG fighters as well as ground defence teams.
A former pre-school teacher, Nataliya Grabarchuck, shot down a Russian cruise missile with an Igla surface to air interceptor with her first shot, Ukraine’s military said. It was her first “combat launch”, the country’s armed forces said.
Sybiha described the strike as Moscow’s “true response” to leaders who had interacted with President Vladimir Putin, an apparent swipe at the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, who placed a phone call to the Russian leader on Friday for the first time since December 2022.
On Friday evening, after the call, the Kremlin released its account of the discussion, in which Putin gave little sign of abandoning his maximalist war demands, including demanding that Ukraine walks away from the west and accepts the Russian occupation of about a sixth of its territory.
The Russian president “reiterated that the current crisis was a direct result of Nato’s long-standing aggressive policy aimed at creating a staging ground against Russia on Ukrainian soil, while showing disregard for Russia’s security concerns and trampling on the rights of Russian-speaking residents of Ukraine”.
Negotiations should address these security concerns, the Kremlin added, and “rest on the new territorial realities” – a reference to the Russian occupation of the east and south of Ukraine – and to “eliminate the original causes of the conflict”.
In an interview with Ukraine’s Suspilne radio released on Saturday, Zelenskyy said he hoped the war would end in 2025. Victory, he said, would amount to “a strong Ukraine” emerging either on the battlefield or through diplomacy, though he was not specific in how that might be achieved.
The president also insisted that the US under Trump could not force Ukraine into a humiliating or unattractive peace settlement. “We are an independent country,” Zelenskyy said, and that “the rhetoric of ‘sit down and listen’ does not work with us”.
In response, Elon Musk, the billionaire adviser to Trump, sought to undercut the Ukrainian president. “His sense of humour is amazing,” Musk posted on X. His Space X company provides Starlink satellite internet services of critical importance to Ukraine for battlefield communications.
