Russian missiles leave Ukrainians in cold and dark

A fresh barrage of Russian missiles has again battered Ukraine, killing at least three people and cutting electricity to much of the country in the run-up to new year celebrations.

A rescuer among debris from a missile attack outside Kyiv. Picture: AFP

A fresh barrage of Russian missiles has again battered Ukraine, killing at least three people and cutting electricity to much of the country in the run-up to new year celebrations.

In a first, Belarus said a Ukrainian missile had fallen on its territory, sparking a diplomatic protest and a suggestion from Kyiv that the incident might have been engineered by Moscow.

Blast were reported across the country on Thursday, including in the capital Kyiv, the second city Kharkiv in the east and the western city of Lviv on the border with Poland.

“Unfortunately, due to significant network damage, it is difficult for us to deliver electricity in Kharkiv, Kyiv, Odessa, Mykolaiv, Kherson and Lviv regions,” said the head of Ukraine’s grid operator Ukrenergo.

The missiles struck as far as the western region of Ivano-Frankivsk at the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains, nearly 1000km from Russia.

Ukraine’s commander-in-chief, General Valeriy Zaluzhny, said Russia had launched 69 cruise missiles, 54 of which had been shot down.

“Senseless barbarism,” tweeted Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba.

Ukrainian servicemen pose on a T-80 tank in an undisclosed location in eastern Ukraine on Thursday. Picture: AFP

On Thursday, the Belarusian defence ministry said its forces had downed a Ukrainian missile near the western city of Brest on the border with Poland, broadcasting footage of fragments that had fallen on a field.

Kyiv later suggested the incident might have been a Russian ploy to try to draw Belarus into the conflict.

“The Ukrainian side does not exclude a deliberate provocation on the part of … Russia, which laid such a route for its cruise missiles to provoke their interception in the airspace over the territory of Belarus,” Ukraine’s defence ministry said.

The attacks came 10 months into Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. In recent months Russian strikes have targeted the ­energy grid, leaving millions in the cold in the middle of winter.

The US embassy in Kyiv said Moscow was ramping up its campaign of attacks, “cruelly wielding cold and dark” against Ukraine.

“Russia does not want peace with Ukraine,” said British ambassador Melinda Simmons. “Russia wants the subjugation of Ukraine.”

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said Russian troops had “deliberately” targeted and killed civilians.

“There will be no impunity for Russian war crimes,” he said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, took part by video link in a ceremony that saw the commissioning of new warships and a nuclear-powered submarine.

Western intelligence has said Russia is struggling to meet ordnance needs for the invasion, something Moscow has denied.

Moscow has accused pro-Kyiv forces of targeting Russian military sites and civilian infrastructure.

On Thursday Russian forces shot down a drone near Engels, a key air base hundreds of kilometres from Ukraine’s border that has already been targeted twice this month in deadly attacks.

AFP