Zelenskiy says ‘it’s been a difficult night’ after Russia fires 81 missiles at targets in Ukraine
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has posted to his official Telegram about the night’s events, writing:
It’s been a difficult night. A massive rocket attack across the country. Kyiv, Kirovohrad, Dnipro, Odesa, Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk, Zhytomyr, Vinnytsia regions. Attacks on critical infrastructure and residential buildings. Unfortunately, there are injured and dead. My condolences to the families.
All services are working. The energy system is being restored. Restrictions were imposed in all regions.
The enemy fired 81 missiles in an attempt to intimidate Ukrainians again, returning to their miserable tactics. The occupiers can only terrorise civilians. That’s all they can do. But it won’t help them. They won’t avoid responsibility for everything they have done.
We thank the guardians of our skies and everyone who helps to overcome the consequences of the occupiers’ sneaking attacks.
Key events
Intense fighting has continued in and around the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut.
The below graphic shows the Russian military advances within the region.
A residential building in Lviv oblast has been targeted by Russian missiles. Maksym Kozytskyy, the head of the Lviv oblast administration, released drone footage showing the aftermath of the attack on Thursday. A fifth person had died in overnight strikes, the governor said.
Reuters has reported more details on the Russian missile strikes across Ukraine while people slept on Thursday, killing at least six civilians, knocking out electricity and forcing a nuclear power plant off the grid.
Reuters reports:
The first big volley of missile strikes since mid-February shattered the longest period of comparative calm since Moscow began a campaign to attack Ukraine’s civil infrastructure five months ago. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said infrastructure and residential buildings in 10 regions had been hit.
“The occupiers can only terrorise civilians. That’s all they can do. But it won’t help them. They won’t avoid responsibility for everything they have done,” Zelenskiy said in a statement.
At least five people were killed in a missile that destroyed a village house in the western Lviv region, according to emergency services. Drone footage from the area, some 700 km (440 miles) from any military battlefield, showed a flattened home surrounded by badly damaged buildings.
Another civilian was reported killed by the missiles in the central Dnipro region. Three civilians were separately reported killed by artillery in Kherson.
In the capital Kyiv, residents were awakened by explosions. A seven-hour air strike alert through the night was the longest of the Russian air campaign that began in October.
“I heard a very loud explosion, very loud. We quickly jumped out of bed and saw one car on fire. Then the other cars caught on fire as well. The glass shattered on the balconies and windows,” said Liudmyla, 58, holding a toddler in her arms.
“It’s very frightening. Very frightening. The child got scared and jumped out of bed,” she said. “How can they do this? How is this possible? They are not humans, I don’t know what to call them. They are frightening the children, their mental state will be disrupted.”
Moscow says its campaign of targeting Ukraine’s infrastructure far from the front is intended to reduce its ability to fight. Kyiv says the air strikes have no military purpose and aim to harm and intimidate civilians, a war crime.
Ukrainian officials said Moscow had fired six of its kinzhal hypersonic missiles, an unprecedented number, which Ukraine has no way of shooting down. Russia is believed to have only a few dozen of the missiles, which President Vladimir Putin regularly touts in speeches as a weapon for which NATO has no answer.
Ukraine said the missiles had knocked out the power supply to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, severing it from the Ukrainian grid.
The plant, which Russia has held since capturing it early in the war, is near the front line and both sides have warned in the past of a potential for disaster there caused by fighting. Moscow said the was being kept safe on diesel backup power.
“Everything is absolutely normal: the specialists at the plant are working quite professionally, the automation has started up,” Renat Karchaa, an adviser to the CEO of Russian state energy firm Rosenergoatom, said on state TV channel Rossiya 24.
“There is no threat or danger of a nuclear incident. There is more than enough fuel and, if necessary, it will be supplied to the plant.”
Alessio Mamo has been at the scene of today’s strike on Kyiv for the Guardian.
Summary of the day so far …
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Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said it had been “a difficult night” as Russian strikes hit targets across Ukraine early on Thursday, including Kyiv, the Black Sea port of Odesa and the second-largest city, Kharkiv, knocking out power to several areas. The attacks struck a wide arc of targets including cities stretching from Zhytomyr, Vinnytsia and Rivne in the west to Dnipro and Poltava in central Ukraine.
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Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched 81 missiles in total, alongside eight Shahed drones. It claimed to have shot down 34 cruise missiles and four of the drones.
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Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, said explosions were reported in the south-western part of the city and rescue services were on their way. Two people were injured. “After the missile attack, due to emergency power outages, 40% of the capital’s consumers are currently without heating. Water supply works normally,” he said on Telegram.
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Maksym Kozytskyi, the governor of Lviv, reported five people had been killed in a strike on the Zolochiv district. Oleh Synyehubov, governor of Kharkiv, said two women in their 70s had been injured by a strike on Pisochyn. Ukraine’s presidential chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, reported that three people were killed in the southern city of Kherson.
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Strikes cut off Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant from the power grid, the company Energoatom said. “Today, the last line of communication between the occupied Zaporizhzhia NPP and the Ukrainian power system has been cut off. Fuel for operation remains for ten days,” the company said in a statement. In August last year fires caused by shelling cut the last remaining power line to the plant, temporarily disconnecting it from the grid for the first time in nearly 40 years of operation. It took two weeks for power to be restored.
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Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, has described the overnight strikes as without military purpose and “just Russian barbarism”.
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Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said on Thursday, during a press conference with his Saudi counterpart, that Saudi Arabia was among the countries that had facilitated prisoner of war swaps with Ukraine.
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Russia’s state-owned news agency Tass is reporting that security services in Moldova’s breakaway region of Transnistria claim to have foiled an assassination attempt on the internationally unrecognised leader, Vadim Krasnoselsky. Transnistria’s security forces claim Ukrainian security services were the source of the plans.
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The Kremlin said on Thursday it doubted the attacks on the Nord Stream pipelines could have been carried out without state support, after the New York Times reported that a pro-Ukrainian non-government group might have been responsible for the blasts. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said it was vital to identify who was behind the attacks which ruptured the multi-billion dollar pipelines last September. He added that it was incomprehensible that Russia would blow up its own infrastructure.
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Ukraine will take part in European Union countries’ scheme to jointly buy gas, the bloc’s energy policy chief said on Thursday.
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Slovakia needs to make a decision on sending MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine, the country’s defence minister, Jaroslav Nad, said on Thursday, adding Poland has expressed willingness to act jointly in this matter.
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In a visit to Kyiv on Wednesday, UN secretary general António Guterres told journalists it was “critical” that a deal that allows safe passage for ships carrying grain out of Ukraine across the Black Sea be renewed. A senior UN trade official will meet Russian representatives to discuss the extension of the deal. The Kremlin, however, said on Thursday there were still “a lot of questions” remaining over the deal, and that there were currently no plans for a direct meeting with Guterres.
That is it from me, Martin Belam, for now. I will be back later. Tobi Thomas will be here shortly to take you through the next few hours of our live coverage.
Another series of air raid sirens have just sounded across Ukraine, including in Odesa and Kherson in the south, Lviv in the west and Sumy in the north. The air raid alert in Kyiv overnight lasted for seven hours, as a total of 81 missiles were fired at targets across the country by Russia.
Reuters reports that the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said on Thursday, during a press conference with his Saudi counterpart, that Saudi Arabia and other countries had facilitated prisoner of war swaps with Ukraine.
The Kremlin said on Thursday it doubted the attacks on the Nord Stream pipelines could have been carried out without state support, after the New York Times reported that a pro-Ukrainian non-government group might have been responsible for the blasts.
Reuters reports Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said it was vital to identify who was behind the attacks which ruptured the multibillion-dollar pipelines last September. He added it was incomprehensible that Russia would blow up its own infrastructure.
German prosecutors confirmed yesterday that investigators had searched a boat that may have been used in the bombings.
Earlier today our First Edition newsletter carried some analysis of the situation, with Archie Bland speaking to our defence editor, Dan Sabbagh. Here is what they had to say about the range of people who might be considered responsible for the attack:
While the consequences for European energy supplies have not ultimately proven severe, there are wider implications, Sabbagh said. “Technically this is an attack in international waters, but it’s within the Nato sphere. It’s infrastructure well beyond Russia and Ukraine, so it triggered a lot of anxiety about the security of other assets. It makes the war uncomfortably close.”
If any country with a stake in the region were proven responsible, that would have significant consequences of its own. If the US or a Nato or EU country was behind the attack, that would cause a serious rift in the western alliance in support of Ukraine.
If Ukraine did it, fears that Kyiv was acting recklessly would probably diminish their support in Europe and the US – particularly, for obvious reasons, in Germany.
And evidence of Moscow’s culpability “would be a new frontier in Russian aggression,” Sabbagh said. While a Russian act of sabotage on a Russian-owned piece of infrastructure would not clearly amount to an act of war, the material damage to future gas supplies “would further unite the west against Putin”.
You can read more of that analysis here: The mystery of the Nord Stream sabotage – and who may be responsible
Ukraine will take part in European Union countries’ scheme to jointly buy gas, the bloc’s energy policy chief said on Thursday.
“We have integrated Ukraine in the gas joint purchasing platform with a view to help secure 2bn cubic metres of additional gas,” Reuters reports the EU energy commissioner, Kadri Simson, told a meeting of EU lawmakers.
EU countries plan to sign their first contracts to jointly buy gas by this summer.
The Kremlin said on Thursday that there were still “a lot of questions” remaining over the Black Sea grain deal, and that there were currently no plans for a meeting with the UN secretary general, António Guterres.
The deal, which allows grain to be safely exported from Ukrainian ports despite a Russian naval blockade, expires on 18 March, but cannot be extended if Russia objects. Moscow has already signalled it is unhappy with aspects of the deal, as it seeks to expand the markets for its own agricultural products.
Ukraine has said it will seek to extend the deal for at least a year, and wishes the port of Mykolaiv to be included.
Three killed by Russian strike on Kherson – Ukrainian official
Kyiv said Russian shelling killed three people on Thursday in the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson, as Moscow unleashed a wave of missile strikes overnight.
“Russian terrorists shelled Kherson in the morning. They hit … a public transport stop. Three people died as a result of the shelling,” AFP reports Ukraine’s presidential chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, said on social media.
Russia’s state-owned news agency Tass is reporting that security services in Moldova’s breakaway region of Transnistria claim to have foiled an assassination attempt on the internationally unrecognised leader, Vadim Krasnoselsky.
In its report Tass writes:
Assassination attempts on a number of officials of Transnistria were prepared on the instructions of the Ukrainian security service (SBU), the ministry of state security of the republic reported. Suspects of preparing an assassination attempt on the leader of Transnistria were detained and are giving confessions.
The impending assassination attempt on the leader of Transnistria is qualified as a preparation for a terrorist attack.
The prosecutor of Transnistria said that the SBU was preparing a terrorist attack using a car bomb in the center of Tiraspol.
The claims have not been independently verified. Transnistria, which attempted to break away from Moldova in the early 1990s, borders Ukraine’s west and has Russian troops stationed there.
Slovakia needs to make a decision on sending MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine, the country’s defence minister, Jaroslav Nad, said on Thursday, adding Poland has expressed willingness to act jointly in this matter.
“I think it is time to make a decision,” Reuters reports Nad said on Facebook. “People are dying in Ukraine, we can really help them, there is no room for Slovak politicking.”
