Residents of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv were advised to head to bomb shelters on Friday morning as sirens blared across the city, a day after Russia launched its biggest airstrike since the start of the war in February, Reuters reported.

A little after two o’clock in the morning, the Kyiv city authorities reported on the Telegram channel about air-raid sirens and asked residents to go to shelters.

The governor of the Kyiv region Oleksiy Kuleba said in Telegram that there is a “drone attack”.

A witness 20 kilometers south of Kyiv told Reuters that he heard several explosions and the sound of anti-aircraft fire.

President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyi said in a video message on Thursday evening that during the day, the air command in the center, south, east and west of Ukraine rejected 54 Russian missiles and 11 drones.

Zelenskyi admitted that power outages are observed in most regions. According to Zelensky, areas where the lack of electricity was “particularly severe” included the capital Kyiv, Odesa and Kherson in the south and surrounding regions, as well as the region around Lviv, near the western border with Poland.

“But this is nothing compared to what could have happened if it were not for our heroic anti-aircraft troops and air defenses,” he said.

Pictures taken by Reuters on Thursday showed emergency workers searching the smoldering remains of residential buildings in Kyiv destroyed by the explosion and smoke trails from rockets in the sky. Officials previously said more than 120 rockets were fired during Thursday’s attack.

As a result of the latest attacks, more than 18 residential buildings and 10 objects of critical infrastructure were destroyed, the Ministry of Defense reported.

Waves of Russian airstrikes in recent months on energy infrastructure have left millions without electricity in temperatures that often drop below freezing.

(source: news.ro)