A Ukrainian military spokesman said that an unprecedented number of weapons was used in the barrage
Ukrainian rescue workers respond to an emergency. Image shared on Friday by Interior Minister Igor Klimenko. © Telegram / Klymenko_MVS
The Ukrainian Air Force, which is responsible for the nation’s air defenses, said it faced a massive Russian barrage overnight. Officials throughout the country have reported damage.
The reported air raid, which has yet to be confirmed by the Russian military, reportedly involved dozens of drones, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles launched on Thursday night and Friday morning. Igor Ignat, the spokesman for Kiev’s military, told the media that “we have never seen so many targets on our monitors simultaneously.”
Earlier in the week, Kiev celebrated what it hailed as a major success in the conflict, after a Russian warship in the Crimean port city of Feodosia was damaged by air-launched cruise missiles.
Kiev Mayor Vitali Klitschko said a metro station was damaged, as well as warehouses in two separate districts of the Ukrainian capital. His office said a business center was also set on fire.
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Sergey Lisak, who heads the Dnepropetrovsk Region, reported that a shopping mall was hit in the city of Dnepr, the region’s capital. Oleg Sinegub, his counterpart from Kharkov Region, said “civilian infrastructure” was damaged, including warehouses and a medical facility.
Prime Minister Denis Shmygal reported issues with the power supply in the city of Kharkov – which Mayor Igor Terekhov confirmed – and damage in Lviv, Sumy, Odessa, and Zaporozhye Regions, when he summed up the events in the morning. The minister claimed that “most of the air targets were intercepted” by Ukrainian forces.
Ignat, the military spokesman, claimed on national television that Russia used “everything” in its arsenal except the Kalibr sea-launched cruise missiles, from kamikaze drones to hypersonic air-launched Kinzhal missiles.
Moscow previously stated that Kiev tends to exaggerate the number of Kinzhal missiles used by Russia in the conflict in order to claim that it intercepted those projectiles.
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The Ukrainian official estimated that Russia used 18 Tu-95 strategic bombers to fire air-launched missiles overnight.
