Russia resumed airstrikes on key Ukraine cities on Tuesday amid G20 Summit in Bali where global leaders demanded steps to end the conflict.
The Russian airstrikes targeted civilian infrastructure in the cities, reports said. Power blackouts were reported across the country as the strikes damaged power infrastructure. Multiple emergency blackouts were reported in at least dozen regions across the country. Ukraine authorities warned that more attacks may be coming.
The aerial assault resulted in at least one death in a residential building in the capital, Kyiv.
At least a dozen regions reported strikes, which caused multiple emergency blackouts. A Ukrainian air force spokesman said Russia fired around 100 missiles. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy put the number at 85.
Zelenskyy warned that more attacks may be coming but defiantly vowed, with a shake of his fist: We will survive everything. A senior official, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, said the barrage was another planned attack on energy infrastructure facilities."
“Most of the hits were recorded in the centre and in the north of the country. In the capital, the situation is very difficult,” Tymoshenko wrote on Telegram. “It was difficult elsewhere, too.”
As its battlefield losses mount, Russia has in recent months increasingly resorted to targeting Ukraine's power grid, seemingly hoping to turn the approach of winter into a weapon by leaving people in the cold and dark.
While city after city reported attacks, Tymoshenko appealed to Ukrainians to hang on and acknowledged the severity of the situation.
Among regions where officials reported strikes were Lviv, Zhytomyr, Khmelnytskyi and Rivne in the west, and Kharkiv, Ukraine's second largest city in the northeast. Several missile strikes also hit Kryvyi Rih, Zelenskyy's native city, according to its mayor, Oleksandr Vilkul.
In Kyiv, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said authorities found a body in one of three residential buildings that were struck in the capital, where emergency blackouts were also announced by power provider DTEK.
A video published by a presidential aide showed a five-storey, apparently residential building in Kyiv on fire, with flames licking through apartments. Klitschko said air defence units also shot down some missiles.
Ukraine had seen a period of comparative calm since previous waves of drone and missile attacks several weeks ago.
The strikes came as authorities were already working furiously to get Kherson back on its feet and beginning to investigate alleged Russian abuses there and its surrounds.
The southern city is without power and water, and the head of the UN human rights office's monitoring mission in Ukraine, Matilda Bogner, on Tuesday decried a dire humanitarian situation there.
