6 Civilians Killed in Russian Attack on Ukraine
NEW DELHI, Mar 9: At least six civilians were killed as Russia launched a huge wave of missile strikes across Ukraine on Thursday night when people were sleeping knocking out electricity and forcing a nuclear power plant off the grid.
The first big volley of missile strikes since mid-February shattered the longest period of comparative calm since Moscow began a campaign to attack Ukraine’s civil infrastructure five months ago. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said infrastructure and residential buildings in 10 regions had been hit.
“The occupiers can only terrorise civilians. That’s all they can do. But it won’t help them. They won’t avoid responsibility for everything they have done,” Zelenskiy said in a statement.
At least five people were killed in a missile that destroyed a village house in the western Lviv region, according to emergency services. Drone footage from the area, some 700 km from any military battlefield, showed a flattened home surrounded by badly damaged buildings.
Another civilian was reported killed by the missiles in the central Dnipro region. Three civilians were separately reported killed by artillery in Kherson. In the capital Kyiv, residents were awakened by explosions. A seven-hour air strike alert through the night was the longest of the Russian air campaign that began in October.
Moscow says its campaign of targeting Ukraine’s infrastructure far from the front is intended to reduce its ability to fight. Kyiv says the air strikes have no military purpose and aim to harm and intimidate civilians, a war crime.
Ukrainian officials said Moscow had fired six of its kinzhal hypersonic missiles, an unprecedented number, which Ukraine has no way of shooting down. Russia is believed to have only a few dozen of the missiles, which President Vladimir Putin regularly touts in speeches as a weapon for which NATO has no answer.
Ukraine said the missiles had knocked out the power supply to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, severing it from the Ukrainian grid.
The plant, which Russia has held since capturing it early in the war, is near the front line and both sides have warned in the past of a potential for disaster there caused by fighting. Moscow said the plant was being kept safe on diesel backup power.
Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko reported explosions in the south-western part of the capital. He said 40% of consumers in Kyiv were without heating due to electricity shutdowns. The governor of Odesa region, Maksym Marchenko, said a mass missile attack had hit an energy facility in the city, cutting power. Residential areas had also been hit. Kharkiv region Governor Oleh Synehubov said the city and region had been hit by 15 strikes, with targets including infrastructure.
Moscow, which claims to have annexed a fifth of Ukraine, says it launched its “special military operation” a year ago to combat a security threat from its neighbour’s ties to the West. Kyiv and the West call it an unprovoked war of aggression to subdue and conquer an independent state.
(Manas Dasgupta)
