Russian missile barrage hits energy, railways across Ukraine
Sign up now: Get insights on Asia's fast-moving developments
A firefighter working at the site of a residential building damaged during Russian drone and missile strikes in Kyiv on Feb 22.
PHOTO: REUTERS
KYIV – Russia fired scores of missiles and drones at targets across Ukraine on Feb 22, crashing into energy and rail infrastructure and residential buildings, just two days before the fourth anniversary of Russia’s invasion
AFP journalists in Kyiv heard a series of blasts starting at around 4am (10am Singapore time), shortly after an air raid alert was issued, with the air force later widening the alert warning nationwide, citing the threat of missiles.
“Moscow continues to invest in strikes more than in diplomacy,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky commented on the attack on social media, saying that Russia launched about 50 missiles and 300 drones overnight.
“The main target of the attack was the energy sector. Ordinary residential buildings were also damaged, and there is damage to the railway,” he said.
One man was killed and a dozen more people were wounded, among them four children, in and around Kyiv, Ukraine’s national police said.
Rescuers sifted through debris of a largely destroyed two-storey house in Sofiivska Borshchagivka in the Kyiv region.
Temperatures plunged to nearly minus 10 deg C when the capital was struck, with emergency services deployed across the city.
The Ukrainian capital, regularly targeted by Russian missile and drone attacks since the start of the invasion on Feb 24, 2022
The Russian army said it carried out a mass strike targeting facilities used by Ukraine’s military, saying all targets were hit, in a standard comment for such attacks.
The authorities in Russia’s western Belgorod region said one man died after a Ukrainian drone strike.
‘Act of terrorism’
The bombardment, which included ballistic and cruise missiles, prompted heightened vigilance across Ukraine, all the way to the western border.
Ukraine’s Energy Ministry said consumers in six eastern and south-eastern regions were without power after the strikes.
Poland’s Operational Command said early on Feb 22 it was scrambling jets after detecting “long-range aviation of the Russian federation conducting strikes on the territory of Ukraine”.
In a separate attack, an explosion rocked a store in central Lviv, a western city near the Polish border far from the front line that is largely spared the worst of the conflict.
Explosions ripped through a central shopping street at around midnight, killing a policewoman and wounding 25 people after officers responded to a reported break-in.
Hours later, law enforcement said it detained a Ukrainian woman suspected of carrying out the bombing, without giving more details and saying that a probe was ongoing.
“This is clearly an act of terrorism,” Mayor Andriy Sadovyi said, offering no details on perpetrators.
Ukraine ‘not losing’
Ukraine will mark four years since Russia’s assault on Feb 24, 2022, a war that has shattered towns, uprooted millions and killed large numbers on both sides.
Moscow occupies close to a fifth of Ukrainian territory and continues to grind forward in places, especially in the eastern Donbas region, despite heavy losses and repeated Ukrainian strikes on logistics.
Mr Zelensky said on Feb 20 that Ukraine was “definitely not losing” the war and that victory remained the goal. He said Ukrainian forces had clawed back about 300 sq km of territory in recent counter-attacks, gains AFP could not immediately verify. If confirmed, they would be Kyiv’s most significant advances since 2023.
Sweeping outages of Starlink internet terminals across the Ukraine front, shut down by owner Elon Musk following a plea from Kyiv, have enabled the push, according to Mr Zelensky.
The United States is pushing both sides to end the war, brokering several rounds of talks since in recent weeks without a clear breakthrough.
Mr Zelensky, under mounting pressure from Washington to consider concessions, said on X on Feb 21 he planned consultations with European leaders in the coming days and wanted deeper involvement from Middle Eastern states and Turkey. AFP
