Russia kills civilians in first major missile wave in weeks By Reuters

By Pavel Polityuk and Andriy Perun

KYIV/ZOLOCHIV, Ukraine (Reuters) – Russia launched a massive wave of missile attacks on Ukraine while people slept on Thursday, killing at least six civilians, knocking out electricity and briefly forcing Europe’s largest nuclear power plant to disconnect from the network.

The first such massive strike against targets far from the frontline since mid-February broke the longest lull since Moscow began an air campaign against Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure five months ago. kyiv said it included an unprecedented six Kinzhal hypersonic cruise missiles, one of Moscow’s most valuable weapons.

“The occupiers can only terrorize civilians. That is all they can do. But it will not help them. They will not avoid responsibility for everything they have done,” President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a statement, describing the attacks that hit the infrastructure and housing. buildings in ten regions.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said it had carried out a “massive retaliatory attack” in revenge for a cross-border raid last week. It claimed to have hit all of its intended targets, destroying drone bases, disrupting railways, and damaging facilities that manufacture and repair weapons.

Villagers in Zolochiv, in the western Lviv region of Ukraine, loaded a body in a black plastic bag onto the rubble of a brick house completely destroyed by a missile. They put the body in the back of a white van with two other people, of at least five people killed there. A dog lay curled up on a rug in the ruins.

Oksana Ostapenko said the house belonged to her sister Halyna, whose body was still buried under rubble with two other family members.

“They haven’t found them yet. We hoped they were alive. But they are not alive, ”he said.

Another civilian was reported to have been killed by the missiles in the central Dnipro region. It was separately reported that three civilians were killed by artillery in Kherson.

Moscow says its campaign against targets far from the front, which began in October, is aimed at reducing Ukraine’s combat capability. kyiv says the airstrikes have no military purpose and are aimed at harming and intimidating civilians, a war crime.

In the capital kyiv, the seven-hour overnight alert was the longest of Russia’s five-month air campaign.

“I heard a very loud, very loud explosion. We quickly jumped out of bed and saw a car on fire. Then the other cars also caught fire. Glass on the balconies and windows were smashed,” said Liudmyla, 58, holding a small child in his arms on a Kiev street near wrecked cars.

“The boy got scared and jumped out of bed,” she said. “How can they do this? How is this possible? They are not human.”

HIRESONIC MISSILES

Moscow confirmed that it had used hypersonic Kinzhal missiles in Thursday’s attack. Ukrainian officials said it was the first time they had faced so many of the weapons, which Ukraine has no way to shoot down.

Russia is believed to have only a few dozen kinzhals, which fly many times faster than the speed of sound and are built to carry nuclear warheads with a range of more than 2,000 km (1,200 mi). In his speeches, President Vladimir Putin often touts the kinzhal as a weapon for which NATO has no answer.

Ukraine said the attacks also cut power to Europe’s largest Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, cutting it off from the Ukrainian grid and forcing it to use emergency diesel power to avoid a meltdown. It was later reconnected to the Ukrainian power grid, operator Ukrenergo said.

The plant, which Russia has occupied since it captured it early in the war, is close to the front line and both sides have warned of a potential disaster in the past. Moscow said it was safe.

“The plant specialists are working quite professionally, the automation has been put in place,” said Renat Karchaa, adviser to the director general of Russia’s state-owned nuclear power operator Rosenergoatom. “There is no threat or danger of a nuclear incident.”

The UN nuclear watchdog chief, Rafael Grossi, called for a buffer zone around the plant.

“Every time we roll a dice. And if we allow this to continue over and over again, one day our luck will run out,” Grossi told the IAEA’s 35-nation Board of Governors.

kyiv, the Black Sea port of Odessa and the second-largest city, Kharkiv, were affected. The targets stretched from Zhytomyr, Vynnytsia and Rivne in the west to Dnipro and Poltava in central Ukraine, authorities said.

UKRAINE FIGHTS IN BAKHMUT

On the battlefield, the week has seen an apparent turnaround as Ukraine has decided to keep fighting in Bakhmut, a small town that has borne the brunt of a Russian winter offensive in the bloodiest fighting of the war.

GRAPHIC – The Battle for Bakhmut The Battle for Bakhmut: https://www.reuters.com/graphics/UKRAINE-CRISIS/gkplwlywwvb/chart.png

Moscow says Bakhmut is strategically important as a step to secure the surrounding Donbas region, a major war objective. The West says the ruined city is worth little and that Russian generals are sacrificing lives to give Putin his only victory since he sent hundreds of thousands of reservists into battle late last year.

It seemed likely that Ukraine would withdraw from Bakhmut, but commanders now say they are inflicting enough damage on Russia’s assault force to justify staying and fighting.

“Every day of defending the city allows us to buy time to prepare reserves and prepare for future offensive operations,” said Oleksandr Sirskiy, commander of Ukraine’s ground forces. “The enemy loses the most prepared and fighting part of his army.”

Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of Russia’s private Wagner army that led the fighting in Bakhmut, said Wednesday that his forces controlled the entire city east of a river that runs through it.

Moscow, which claims to have annexed a fifth of Ukraine, says it launched its “special military operation” a year ago to combat a security threat. kyiv and the West call it an unprovoked war to subdue an independent state.