Russia rains heavy missile, drone attack on Ukraine, a day after strike on key energy infrastructure

Waves of Russian drones and missiles assailed Ukraine on Tuesday and killed at least five people, Ukrainian authorities said, in the second day of Moscow’s bolstered aerial attacks against its war-torn neighbor.

Ukraine’s air force said it shot down five cruise missiles and 60 Iranian-made Shahed drones launched by Russian forces in areas including the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv and the Kherson, Mykolaiv, Kharkiv, Sumy and Zaporizhzhia regions, according to a Google-translated Telegram post.

Two people were killed in the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih as part of the attack, with another five injured, regional Gov. Oleksandr Vilkul said in a separate Google-translated Telegram update, further announcing a day of mourning on Wednesday.

Another three people were killed in the offensive in the Zaporizhzhia area, according to a Google-translated Telegram report from local head Ivan Fedorov.

CNBC could not independently verify developments on the ground.

The latest fusillades come a day after Russia rained down a “massive” barrage of 236 drones and missiles on “critical Ukrainian infrastructure,” including fuel and energy state facilities, the Ukrainian air force said Monday in a Google-translated update on Telegram, citing Commander Lt. Gen. Mykola Oleschuk. The force added that it had shot down 102 of these missiles and 99 of the drones.

“Like most previous Russian strikes, this one was just as vile, targeting critical civilian infrastructure,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly address Monday.

He added that Ukraine’s energy sector had suffered “a lot of damage,” but pledged that “wherever there is a power outage, restoration is already underway. Our repair crews will work around the clock. We will restore electricity. In all cities and communities that need it, the Points of Invincibility are about to open now.”

In a Google-translated Telegram post, Russia’s Ministry of Defense said that the nation’s long-range precision and sea-based weapons were deployed on Monday against “critical energy infrastructure facilities that supported the operation of Ukraine’s military-industrial complex,” stating that “all designated targets were hit.”

U.S. President Joe Biden, who has assiduously supported Kyiv since Russia’s full-fledged invasion in February 2022, struck out against Russia’s “outrageous attack” of Monday and its targeting of critical Ukrainian energy sites.

“I condemn, in the strongest possible terms, Russia’s continued war against Ukraine and its efforts to plunge the Ukrainian people into darkness,” the White Housel leader said.

The American nonprofit Institute for the Study of War qualified Moscow’s offensive on Monday as “one of the largest combined series of drone and missile strikes against Ukrainian critical infrastructure to date,” but noted that “Russia likely lacks the defense-industrial capacity to sustain such massive strikes at a similar scale with regularity.”

Russia and Ukraine have been scaling up aerial offensives in recent weeks, with Kyiv undertaking one of the largest-ever drone attacks against the Russian capital of Moscow — a less frequent direct target throughout the war — last week, according to Russian officials.

Since early August, Ukraine has been simultaneously pursuing a surprise counter-incursion into Russian territory, particularly lodging advances in the Kursk region – home to a nuclear power plant where the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Rafael Grossi is on Tuesday leading an on-site delegation to inspect local safety and security.