Ukrainian officials also said the strikes cut off the last remaining external power line to the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, which is located in territory occupied by Russia, forcing the plant, Europe’s largest, to rely on generator power. The power outage came a day after a visit to Kyiv by U.N. Secretary General António Guterres, who reiterated his calls for creating an internationally-brokered “demilitarized zone” around the power plant.
Speaking in Kyiv on Wednesday, where he met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Guterres said: “” The position of the United Nations, which I have consistently expressed, is crystal clear: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a violation of the U.N. Charter and international law.”
The overnight and early morning barrage on Thursday — which included 81 missiles of different types as well as Iranian-made drones — sent a clear message from Moscow that Russia would not be cowed by international pressure into abandoning its war aims, which include the illegal annexation of at least four regions in southeast Ukraine.
Thursday’s airstrikes marked the first time in weeks that Russia sent such a varied range of high-powered missiles raining down on Ukraine, after a brief pause in the relentless bombing campaign against Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure that started in October and continued roughly through mid-February.
The attacks were part of a concerted Russian drive to cut power and heat to Ukrainian citizens during the coldest months. Russian officials insisted the strikes are intended to slow Ukraine down on the battlefield. Bombing civilian targets with no military value is a potential war crime.
Ukrainian officials have said the airstrikes were designed to weaken Ukrainian resolve, and on March 1 — the official first day of spring — the country celebrated both the new season and that it had survived the Russian bombardment.
The Kinzhal hypersonic missiles Russian used Thursday were first fired on Ukraine last March and have been used several times since, with Ukrainian officials noting that their air defenses are powerless to stop them.
Russian President Vladimir Putin boasted in 2018 that the missiles travel at 10 times the speed of sound. Last March, President Biden said the missiles were “almost impossible to stop.”
In January, Ukrainian officials blamed one such missile for the deadly strike on a residential building in the city of Dnipro that killed at least 46 people and eviscerated an entire section of a large apartment complex.
Russia has a limited supply of such missiles, and has never sent so many toward Ukraine in a single attack. Ukraine’s Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov claimed in November that Russia had used 16 Kinzhal missiles over the course of the war, and retained stocks of 42 missiles after replacing those it had fired.
Ukrainian officials have pleaded for their Western supporters, including the U.S., to share stronger air defense systems, including the Patriot system, to help stop attacks that are undetectable with their existing hardware.
In addition to the missile strikes, the head of the Ukrainian presidential administration, Andriy Yermak, reported on Telegram that Russian shelling had killed three people in the southern city of Kherson. The Russian invaders had occupied Kherson for months, and since retreating in November have been bombing it mercilessly from the east side of the Dnieper River.
With Ukraine’s nuclear energy operator, Energoatom, warning that backup generators could only keep electricity flowing to the giant power station for 10 days, the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, urged immediate action.
“Each time we are rolling a dice,” Grossi said in a statement Thursday. “And if we allow this to continue time after time then one day our luck will run out.”
Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said on Thursday that President Vladimir Putin had no plans yet to speak to Guterres, whose discussions with Zelensky focused in part on a potential extension of the Black Sea grain deal, which protects the export of Ukrainian grain, which is relied on by many developing countries.
On Wednesday, U.S. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told senators that Putin is facing “considerable constraints.”
Prolonging the war in Ukraine, she said, may be what he sees as his “best remaining pathway to eventually securing Russia’s strategic interests in Ukraine.”
Meanwhile, fierce fighting continued in the embattled eastern city of Bakhmut, which has become a symbol of Ukrainian resistance as Ukraine has refused to surrender control to massive waves of Russian fighters, including many untrained mercenaries recruited from Russian prisons.
NATO Secretary General Jans Stoltenberg said Wednesday that Russia has “suffered big losses but at the same time we cannot rule out that Bakhmut may eventually fall in the coming days.”
The same day, Yevgeniy Prigozhin, the head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary force, posted a video claiming his troops were fully in control of neighborhoods east of the Bakhmutka River, which cuts through the city in the eastern Donetsk region.
Russian forces have closed in on Ukrainian troops from three sides, leaving only one major road available for travel in and out of the city. That road is within range of Russian artillery shelling, making the journey perilous.
Dixon reported from Riga, Latvia.
*This story has not been edited by The Infallible staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.
