Russia Ukraine war latest news: Putin’s missile strikes rock Kyiv, Odesa and Kharkiv

Russia has launched a volley of missile attacks on many parts of Ukraine this morning, including the Black Sea port of Odesa and the country’s largest city Kharkiv, regional officials have confirmed.

A mass missile strike in the Odesa region has struck an energy facility in the port city, leading to massive power cuts, governor Maksym Marchenko said.

No casualties have been reported so far but residential areas have been targeted.

At least 15 strikes have hit Kharkiv region, governor Oleh Synehubov said. Other strikes were reported in the central city of Dnipro and regions throughout the country.

Russia unleashed a massive missile barrage across Ukraine early today, targeting energy infrastructure in the first attack on such a scale in three weeks.

The pre-dawn attacks led to air raid sirens wailing for hours across Ukraine, including the capital, Kyiv, where explosions occurred in two western areas of the city.

Defence systems were activated around the country, and it wasn’t clear how many missiles struck targets or were intercepted.

At least five people have been killed in a massive missile attack today, and several more have been wounded, Ukrainian officials said.

Four of these were killed in Lviv region after a missile struck a residential area in the Zolochivskyi district, regional governor Maksym Kozytskyi.

Emergency workers were sifting through the rubble to search for trapped people, Mr Kozytskyi said. Another person was killed in Dnipropetrovsk region, regional governor Serhii Lysak reported, adding that two more were wounded in multiple strikes across the region. The Kyiv mayor reported damage in two districts, and the Kharkiv and Odesa governors said residential buildings were hit there.

The British intelligence suggests that there is a realistic possibility that joint Russo-Belarusian air activity will now be forced to rely on ground control and fighter escort until another MAINSTAY aircraft fleet can be deployed.

Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko confirmed that one of Russia’s small fleet of A-50U MAINSTAY D airborne early warning and control aircraft deployed in Belarus had been damaged, the ministry said.

It is likely that the aircraft was almost certainly attacked by a small uncrewed air system.

“The MAINSTAY has likely now been moved to a repair facility at Taganrog in Russia. The transit flight reportedly took place at a lower than usual altitude, likely because of damage to the pressurised cabin,” the British defence ministry said.

It added: “The MAINSTAY was likely providing situational awareness for MiG-31K FOXHOUND D fighter aircraft modified to launch the AS-24 KILLJOY air launched ballistic missile which Russia sees as a key strategic capability.”

“The modification saw the jets’ internal radar removed to balance the airframe, making pilots reliant on external sources of situational awareness, such as MAINSTAY,” the MoD said.

The Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant has been cut off from Ukrainian power system after a slew of Russian attacks this morning, officials said.

Ukrainian nuclear energy company Energoatom confirmed that the last line of communication between the Russian-occupied plant and Ukraine’s power system was cut off after Russian attacks today after the area came under missile attack.

The six-month battle for the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut has been the longest and bloodiest fight of the war so far.

Little known outside Ukraine before the Russian invasion, Bakhmut has become a symbol of the country’s fortitude and perseverance in the face of the Kremlin’s onslaught.

Military experts note that Ukraine has turned Bakhmut into a meat grinder for Russia’s most capable forces.

“It has achieved its aim as effectively being the anvil on which so many Russian lives have been broken,” Lord Richard Dannatt, the former chief of the general staff of the British armed forces, said on Sky News.

A slew of loud explosion have rocked Kyiv this hour, reported The Kyiv Independent.

Another explosion was heard from central district in Kyiv Holosiivskyi, the regional mayor Vitali Klitschko said on Telegram.

“Explosions in the Holosiiv district of the capital. All services follow in place. More details later,” he said this morning.

He added that due to the missile attack, the energy sector officials used a technological emergency to cut off the power supply in the capital. “Currently, approximately 15 per cent of consumers are without electricity,” the mayor notified.

All parts of Ukraine have remained under an air raid alert for the last three-four hours due to incessant Russian missile and drone attacks targetting all parts of the country.

“That was one hell of an alarm clock here in Kyiv. Hoping it was air defense. Mass Russian attack across Ukraine ongoing,” said Oleksiy Sorokin, a journalist with the Ukraine-based The Kyiv Independent.

Volodymyr Zelensky has vowed to “find the murderers” of an unarmed Ukrainian prisoner of war apparently shot dead by Russian forces. The man’s death was captured in graphic footage shared across social media.

Ukraine’s chief prosecutor announced a criminal investigation into the killing, and human rights chief Dmytro Lubinets said it was a violation of the Geneva Conventions.

The 12-second video, orginally posted on Telegram before being shared on Twitter, shows the man in uniform with a Ukrainian insignia on his arm, standing and smoking a cigarette in a wooded area. The man says “Slava Ukraini!” – Glory to Ukraine – before multiple shots are fired. The man then slumps to the ground.

The Pentagon is standing in the way of the Biden administration sharing evidence of Russian war crimes in Ukraine with the International Criminal Court in The Hague, fearing that an investigation would risk setting a precedent that could be used to target US officials in the future.

According to reporting from The New York Times, the department of defence is the only part of the administration that does not want to share the evidence. The State Department, Justice Department, and intelligence agencies all favour handing evidence over to the court.

The decision about what to do will ultimately fall to president Joe Biden, who the Times reported has not yet signalled what he plans to do.

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