On Monday, communities in several regions of Ukraine were searching through the rubble left by hundreds of Russian missiles and drones, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said. It was one of the largest missile attacks Moscow has launched against Ukraine during the war, Zelensky added. The attack came as winter approaches in Ukraine and Russia.
What happened during the strike? About 100 Russian missiles and about the same number of Iranian-made drones hit civilian infrastructure in the regions of Volyn, Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk, Vinnytsia, Khmelnytskyi and Ternopil, Zelensky said. Power grids in the affected areas were badly damaged, he said, and in many areas forces were restoring power after outages. Zelensky called on Western allies to provide more air defenses so that Ukraine could better fend off future Russian attacks like this one.
What does Russia have to say? The Russian Defense Ministry confirmed the attack on Telegram on Monday. It also confirmed that the attacks took place in many of the same regions where Zelensky reported them. However, the Kremlin claimed the attacks targeted power grids protecting Ukraine’s defense system. Russian forces also attacked sites where Ukraine stored weapons for its aircraft, the statement said. The attack successfully disrupted Ukrainian military operations, the Kremlin added.
How is it going on the battlefield? The Russian Defense Ministry on Monday published footage on Telegram of alleged destruction of Ukrainian targets by Russian forces in the Kursk region. The Kremlin had previously claimed on the same day that its artillery units had destroyed dozens of Ukrainian armored vehicles and outposts by then. Earlier this month, Ukrainian troops stormed the border into Russia. They have remained in the country since then. Zelenskyy only indirectly mentioned the Ukrainian operations in Kursk on Sunday and thanked the troops involved in the operations.
Dig deeper: Listen to Lindsay Mast’s report on The world and everything in it Podcast about how Ukraine’s invasion of Kursk could shift the balance of the war.
