According to the Ukrainian Air Force, Russia has launched 81 missiles and eight drones into Ukraine.
Ukraine shot down 34 missiles and four suicide drones. This is what Reuters wrote.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said the authorities in Moscow should be held responsible for the new attacks.
– The occupiers can only terrorize civilians. That’s all they can do. But that won’t help them, Zelensky writes on Telegram and states that critical infrastructure and residential areas were hit with missiles in 10 regions of Ukraine last night.
According to Zelensky’s chief of staff, three people lost their lives in Kherson after Russian missiles hit a public transport station. AFP reports.
Nine people were reported killed as a result of the attacks. The Lviv region was hardest hit, with five people killed, according to CNN.
Kiev residents in the morning hours after the attacks from Russia.
Photo: GLEB GARANICH/Reuters
Kharkiv without electricity
Ukraine’s second largest city, Kharkiv, is obscured. According to Agence France-Presse, the city was left without electricity, water and heat after the night attack.
Kharkiv has reportedly been hit by 15 Russian missile attacks, according to the city’s mayor, Ihor Terekhov.
There is no electricity in the city. We have turned to generators in critical infrastructure. Electric transmission is not working. There is no heating or water supply, Terekhov told local news.
In southern Ukraine, the Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant has been cut off from the power grid. According to the country’s nuclear power operator, Energoatom, the plant is now powered by 18 different diesel generators that have enough fuel to operate for ten days. This is what the French news agency AFP wrote.
The nuclear power plant is under Russian control. The Russian administration at the station described the power outage as a “Ukrainian provocation”.
Smoke spread over Kiev after the Russian attacks last night.
Photo: STRINGER/Reuters
– is worrying
Tormod Heyer, head of research at the Norwegian Armed Forces College, believes this is causing great concern and unease among authorities in Kiev and Washington, DC.
– There is a telephone line between the military authorities in Washington and Moscow. It’s only been used once before as far as I know, and that was when Russian missiles got a little too close to these nuclear power plants.
– So there is no doubt that this is of concern to all parties, says Heyer, who was a guest on Nyhetsmorgen this morning to talk about the tough battles at Bakhmut.
In Kiev, two people were injured and hospitalized after a new explosion in the west of the city, according to the city’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko.
Agence France-Presse wrote that about 40 percent of the capital’s population will be without heat as a result of the attacks. According to CNN, approximately 15 percent of the capital is without electricity.
Attacks in several places in the country
The online newspaper “Kiev Independent” reported that a powerful explosion was heard in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, in the early hours of Thursday morning.
Klitschko wrote on his official Telegram account that several explosions occurred in the Holosiivsky district, south of the city.
Three rockets were launched from the Belgorod region of Russia, seen at dawn today in Kharkiv, Ukraine.
Photo: Vadim Belikov/The Associated Press
Early Thursday morning, missiles hit energy infrastructure and damaged apartment buildings in the Odessa region, according to the governor, Maxim Marchenko.
Fortunately, there were no injuries. The power supply is currently reduced. Some of the missiles were shot down by our air defense systems, Marchenko says on Telegram.
He added that another rune of missiles might be coming, and told the townspeople to stay safe.
In addition, there are reports of explosions in the cities of Kirovohrad, Dnipropetrovsk region, south of Mykolaiv region, Poltava, Lviv, Vinnytsia, Ivano-Frankivsk, Ternopil region, according to the Kiev Independent online newspaper.
The alert for flights went off in 13 regions of Ukraine on Thursday night, Ukraine Now reported on the Telegram platform, and people were urged to get to safety.
Ukrainian soldier targeting Russian forces with a 105mm howitzer shell near the town of Bakhmut, March 8, 2023
Photo: ARIS MESSINIS/AFP
Russia: – The attack was revenge
The Russian government described Thursday’s attack on Ukraine as “large-scale retaliation”.
The Russian Defense Ministry made the claim Thursday.
Russia claimed last week that a group of Ukrainians had entered the country’s Bryansk region, which the Ukrainian authorities denied.
Advisor to the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky stated that this allegation was a provocation to justify the attack on Ukraine.
The Russian military claims that the photo shows the firing of the so-called Kinzhal missile during the 2018 exercise.
Photo: AP
The Russian and Ukrainian militaries say the Kinzhal hypersonic missiles are among those used in the attack.
I think the attacks are related to the Battle of Bakhmut
The senior defense analyst at the Norwegian Foreign Policy Institute (Nupi), Per-Eric Sule, told NRK that this missile attack was unusually powerful.
Russian massive attacks rarely come with long-range weapons. And they have very little stock of ammunition to be able to deliver such large quantities of weapons every week.
Soli believes that these attacks may be related to the fact that Bakhmut is “facing collapse.”
Per-Eric Soule is a senior defense analyst at Nupi.
Photo: Onar Digernes Aase
On Wednesday, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg warned that Bakhmut would fall in a few days. In this case, this would be a huge symbolic victory for Russia.
– I think they want to have a massive campaign coordinated now with a city in eastern Ukraine that might end up in Russian hands, says Soule.
– After that it appears as a strong military force, especially towards its inhabitants.
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