Putin’s forces unleash a new wave of deadly missile strikes in Ukraine

At least four people were killed and more than a dozen injured in drone and missile strikes across the country, authorities said.

In recent weeks, as Kremlin forces are pushed back to the ground, Russia has increasingly resorted to air strikes targeting energy infrastructure in parts of Ukraine it does not control.

In Kiev, the city’s military administration said air defenses shot down at least two cruise missiles and five exploding drones.

Ukraine’s air defenses appear to have had far more successful shootings this week than during previous barrages, analysts say, due in part to weapons systems supplied by the West.

The Russian attacks hit Dnipro and the southern Odessa region of Ukraine for the first time in weeks.

Valentyn Reznichenko, governor of the eastern Dnipropetrovsk region, said a major fire broke out in Dnipro after the strikes hit an industrial target.

At least 14 people were injured in the attack, including a teenage girl, and all were treated at city hospitals, Reznichenko said.

President Volodymyr Zelensky posted on Telegram a video he said was one of the blasts in Dnipro. Vehicle dash cam video shows a fiery explosion engulfing a rainy road.

“This is another confirmation from Dnipro how terrorists want peace,” he wrote. “The peaceful city and people’s desire to live their ordinary lives. To work, to their business. A missile attack!”

Elsewhere, a Russian attack that hit a residential building killed at least four people overnight in Vilnia in the Zaporizhzhia region. According to Kyrylo Tymoshenko, a senior official in the Ukrainian presidential office, rescuers were combing the rubble for other victims.

Critical infrastructure was also hit in the northeastern region of Kharkiv, in the area of ​​Izyum, with three workers injured, the regional government said.

Dnipro mayor Borys Filatov said in a Facebook post that one of his associates was among the injured, showing a photo of what he said was her jacket pierced by shrapnel.

An infrastructure target was hit in the Odessa region, Governor Maksym Marchenko said on Telegram, warning of the threat of a “massive rocket fire on the entire territory of Ukraine”.

Officials in the Poltava, Kharkiv, Khmelnytskyi and Rivne regions urged residents to stay in bomb shelters.

Thursday’s blasts followed a massive barrage of Russian attacks on Tuesday, the largest strike to date against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure that also resulted in a missile hitting Poland.

Russia has increasingly resorted to attacks on Ukraine’s power grid as winter approaches and battlefield losses mount.

The most recent barrage followed days of euphoria in Ukraine sparked by one of its greatest military successes – last week’s recapture of the southern city of Kherson.

Ukraine’s presidential office head Andriy Yermak called the attacks on energy targets “naive tactics of cowardly losers” in a Telegram post on Thursday.

“Ukraine has already endured extremely difficult attacks by the enemy, which have not led to the results Russian cowards hoped for,” he wrote, urging Ukrainians not to ignore the air raid sirens.