On Thursday, Russia launched its biggest missile strike in weeks on Kiev and across Ukraine, injuring at least 18 people, damaging energy facilities and causing power outages.

Partial power outages were reported in five western, central, and eastern regions of Ukraine, reminiscent of last winter’s large-scale attacks on critical infrastructure facilities that caused severe power outages for the civilian population of Ukraine.

“Due to the consequences of the first enemy attack in the last six months, there is damage to power generation facilities in the western and central regions,” the network operator Ukrenergo said in a statement.

There were partial power outages in Rivne, Zhytomyr, Kyiv, Dnipropetrovsk and Kharkiv regions,” Ukrenergo reported.

The Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, General Valery Zaluzhnyi, said that overnight Russia fired 43 cruise missiles at targets in several regions, and Ukrainian air defense shot down 36 of them.

“Missile launches were carried out in several waves. They entered the airspace of Ukraine from several directions, constantly changing the route,” he said in Telegram.

As eyewitnesses reported to Reuters, loud explosions rumbled in Kyiv and the surrounding area at dawn.

The authorities reported that they sent rescuers to several places in the capital. Mayor Vitalii Klitschko said that seven people were injured in the capital, including a nine-year-old girl. According to him, the fragments of the rocket fell in the center of the city, the infrastructure object and several non-residential buildings were damaged, which caused a fire.

Two men were killed in Kherson as a result of a Russian attack, Oleksandr Prokudin, the head of the military administration in the Kherson region, said. Another four people were taken to the hospital, one of them is in serious condition, and the fifth was treated on the spot.

Damage in several cities of Ukraine

Minister of Internal Affairs Ihor Klymenko reported that a hotel and several kiosks were damaged in Cherkasy, and seven people were injured.

The emergency services published a video on Telegram showing how rescuers are carrying a wounded man on a stretcher.

Representatives of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the region reported explosions in Cherkasy, Kharkiv, Khmelnytskyi, Rivne, Vinnytsia, Lviv, and Ivano-Frankivsk regions.

Lviv Oblast Governor Maksym Kozytskyi said that three Russian missiles hit the western city of Drohobych, about 60 km from the border with Poland.

Kozytskyi said that infrastructure facilities and warehouses were damaged.

“Serious damage” in Crimea

The attacks are taking place at a time when Ukraine continues its counteroffensive against Russian troops in the east and south.

A Ukrainian intelligence source reported that the Security Service of Ukraine and the Ukrainian Navy struck the Saka airbase in Russian-occupied Crimea overnight, causing “serious destruction.”

Meanwhile, the Russian military said it had destroyed 19 Ukrainian drones over Crimea and the Black Sea, and did not provide details on casualties or damage.

There will be “difficult months”

Ukraine warned on Thursday of “difficult months to come” after a large-scale missile attack by Russia, AFP and Agerpres reported.

“Difficult months await us: Russia will continue to attack Ukrainian energy and vital facilities,” warned Oleksiy Kuleba, Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration of Ukraine, in Telegram.

Ukrainian authorities fear that as autumn approaches, Moscow will resume its bombing campaign to plunge the civilian population into darkness and cold, as it did in the fall of 2022.