Another barrage

Russia pummels Ukraine’s critical infrastructure with another massive missile attack, knocking out power and water in Odesa

The Russian military launched new missile strikes on Ukraine’s critical infrastructure on December 5. On Monday afternoon, air-strike alerts were active across almost all of Ukraine, including Kyiv and the surrounding region. Meduza summarizes events from throughout the day.

In wartime, verifying military information may take extra time, even if that information comes from official sources. This article is being updated and may be corrected in the future.

According to the Ukrainian Air Force spokesman Yury Ignat, missiles were launched from bomber aircraft and ships in the Volgodonsk, Caspian, and Black Sea areas.

Ignat added that this could be just the first round of strikes, with several more to follow. “They normally do several rounds, to scatter missiles all over Ukraine, and to confuse the Ukrainian air defenses,” he said.

According to Governor Vitalii Kim, Mykolaiv region is getting ready for three rounds of missile strikes.

The Ukrainian media cites eyewitness reports of explosions in the Cherkasy, Zaporizhzhia, Kyiv, Odesa, Kharkiv, Vinnytsia, and Kherson regions. Air-defense systems have been activated and emergency blackouts are in effect in regions currently on air-strike alert.

Update. Air-defense systems have shot down 10 Russian missiles in the Poltava region, as reported by Governor Dmytro Lunin. Nine out of 10 missiles launched into the Kyiv region were also intercepted. According to Valentyn Reznichenko, the governor of the Dnipro region, 15 missiles were shot down there. The Ukrainian Air Force reports having downed more than 60 out of the 70 missiles launched by Russia. The Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal says that other missiles hit energy facilities in the Kyiv, Vinnytsia, and Odesa regions.

Several regional centers — Odesa, Zhytomyr, and Mykolaiv — have partially lost electric power. In Odesa, all water-pumping stations and reserve lines are disconnected from power. The city is currently without water supply.

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said that, during the air raids, many of the residents took shelter in the subway. Some of its stations are temporarily closed for disembarking passengers, because of the crowding. Subway trains have also stopped traveling above ground.

Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the Ukrainian President’s Office, reports that two people have been killed by air strikes in the village of Novosofiivka (Zaporizhzhia region), and that three more people, including a two-year-old, have been wounded.

In the Odesa region, one person has been hospitalized with injuries, and two infrastructure facilities have been damaged, also according to Tymoshenko.

The Russian missile strikes on Ukrainian energy facilities have triggered power surges and outages in Moldova. According to the Moldovan Interior Ministry, fragments of a missile were found in the vicinity of Briceni, a city in Moldova. This might possibly be a Ukrainian air-defense missile, since the fragments are from an S-300 air-defense system.

About two hours from the start of the missile strikes, Ukrainian regions began to cancel air-strike alerts. President Volodymyr Zelensky published a brief video, in which he said that the greater part of the Russian missiles had been shot down by the Ukrainian air defenses. He thanked the Ukrainian military, as well as the energy-sector workers, who had begun restoring power supply to the affected regions.

At the end of the day, Zelensky published another video, reporting that a total of four people had been killed on December 5 as a result of the Russian missile strikes.

Since early October, the Russian military have launched a campaign of regular missile strikes on Ukrainian energy facilities, aiming to disrupt the work of critical infrastructure. As a result of the most extensive missile strike of November 15, all of Ukraine’s major thermal and hydroelectric stations sustained damage.