Missile attacks launched across Ukraine, officials say

Russia has launched a large-scale missile attack across Ukraine at the start of peak morning hours, hitting residential and industrial facilities and injuring several people, Ukraine’s officials said.

All of Ukraine was under air raid alerts from around 6am local time (4am Irish time) with Ukraine’s Air Force saying the country was under several waves of cruise missile threat and in some regions ballistic missiles.

“The enemy is viciously attacking peaceful cities,” Oleksandr Vilkul, mayor of the southern Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih, said on the Telegram messaging app.

Mr Vilkul said full information about the extent of potential damages will be disclosed after the Russian attack was over.

The targets of the Russian attack and the full scale of the strikes was not immediately clear. There was no immediate comment from Moscow.

Anatoliy Kurtiev, secretary of the southeastern Zaporizhzhia city council, said on Telegram that a missile attack on the city resulted in injuries, but he did not provide further detail.

At least one woman was injured in an attack on Ukraine’s second-largest city Kharkiv, Mayor Ihor Terekhov said on the Telegram messaging app. He said industrial facilities were hit, resulting in a fire.

Five blasts were heard in the city of Zaporizhzhia, regional governor Yuriy Malashko said, and at least two people were injured.

“Missiles hit residential areas,” Mr Malaskho said on Telegram.

Ukraine’s military officials in other cities, including Dnipropetrovsk and Khmelnytskyi have also said their cities were under a “massive missile attack” by Russia.

Nearly two years into the war that Russia started with a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, both sides have shifted to increased air strikes at each other’s territories, having struggled to make significant gains along the frontlines.

Russia has launched some of its largest attacks on Kyiv, as well as Ukraine’s second-largest city of Kharkiv.

Meanwhile, Russia evacuated around 300 residents of Belgorod, a city near the Ukrainian border, over strikes by Kyiv, the governor of the region said.

“Some 300 residents of Belgorod, who decided to temporarily evacuate, are at the moment being housed in temporary shelter centres in Stary Oskol, Gubkin and the Korochansky district” which are further from the border, Belgorod region governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said in a video posted on Telegram.