Russia has launched a massive wave of strikes targeting cities across Ukraine, including key civilian infrastructure, in what the Kremlin said was a response to an attack on the Kerch bridge linking Russia and Crimea.
At least 11 people are reported to have been killed and scores more injured, with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, warning of even more “severe retaliation” in the event of further Ukrainian attacks.
“Let there be no doubt,” Putin said in televised comments addressed to his security council, “if attempts at terrorist attacks continue, the response from Russia will be severe.”
As the scale of Monday morning’s assault emerged, Russia faced a chorus of international condemnation, with the EU foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, saying such acts have “no place in [the] 21st century”.
The UN secretary general, António Guterres, was “deeply shocked” by “another unacceptable escalation of the war”, a spokesperson said.
Many of the locations hit by cruise missiles and kamikaze drones in the midst of the morning rush hour appeared to be solely civilian sites or key pieces of infrastructure, including the country’s electric grid, apparently chosen to terrorise Ukrainians.
The strikes, launched from warships and strategic bombers, came barely hours after the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, denounced the bridge attack on Saturday as an “act of terrorism”, which he blamed on Ukraine’s secret services.
As Ukraine counted its dead, a Russian official said Moscow would try to oust Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s government as hardline bloggers and media in Russia celebrated what they hoped would mark the beginning of a widening of the Kremlin’s war.
Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy head of Russia’s security council, chaired by Putin, said Russia, along with protecting its people and borders, should “aim for the complete dismantling of Ukraine’s political regime”, adding the attacks should be seen as a “first episode”.
He alleged that “the Ukrainian state in its current configuration with the Nazi political regime will continue to pose a permanent, direct and clear threat to Russia”.
Among targets hit in the capital were a popular pedestrian and cycle bridge and a major road junction next to a university and a children’s playground in a park. According to Ukraine’s military, by mid-morning on Monday, 75 missiles had been launched, of which it claimed more than 40 had been intercepted. Authorities said an air raid alert in Kyiv was lifted after nearly six hours.
In an update in the midst of the attack, Zelenskiy said Russia had fired dozens of missiles as well as Iranian-made kamikaze drones, adding that Russia’s main targets appeared to be energy infrastructure and civilians. Areas of the country were left without power and heat.
As the attack began around breakfast time, Guardian correspondents in Kyiv heard at least nine missiles fly in and half a dozen loud detonations over the course of the following hours.
Explosions also rocked the cities of Lviv, Ternópil and Dnipro after overnight strikes on the southern city of Zaporizhzhia for a third night in a row. In the 24 hours preceding the attacks, there had been a marked increase in reports of Russian aircraft, including strategic bombers.
In televised remarks, Putin said Moscow had launched long-range missile attacks against Ukraine’s energy, military and communications infrastructure in retaliation for the bridge attack. “To leave such acts without a response is simply impossible,” he said.
Ukrainian officials were exultant after the bridge blast but Kyiv has not claimed responsibility.
Russia’s defence ministry said it had hit “all designated targets”.
According to Rostislav Smirnov, an adviser to Ukraine’s minister of internal affairs, at least eight people died and 24 were injured in the Shevchenkiv district of Kyiv.
Lesia Vasylenko, a member of Ukraine’s parliament, tweeted a photo showing that at least one explosion occurred near the main building of the Kyiv National University in the centre of the capital. A missile also struck a tourist bridge popular with cyclists and walkers, engulfing it in a fireball.
They are not even trying to make this look like they’re hitting military facilities.
— Illia Ponomarenko 🇺🇦 (@IAPonomarenko) October 10, 2022
Russians are just randomly firing missiles upon downtown Kyiv, which makes zero sense - monuments, touristic sights, avenues.
As the first explosions rocked the capital, Zelenskiy appealed to Ukrainians to go to shelters. “They are trying to destroy us and wipe us off the face of the Earth,” he said in a statement shared on Telegram. “Destroy our people who are sleeping at home in Zaporizhzhia. Kill people who go to work in Dnipro and Kyiv.
“I beg you: do not leave shelters. Take care of yourself and your loved ones. Let’s hold on and be strong.”
In the immediate aftermath of the first wave of missiles, Ukraine’s defence ministry said it would seek revenge. “There is sacrifice amongst people and destruction,” the ministry said on its Facebook page. “The enemy will be punished for the pain and death brought upon our land! We will get our revenge!”
The foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, said Ukraine’s government was seeking a “resolute response” from the UN. Germany said the G7 group of countries would hold talks on Tuesday.
A spokesperson for Borrell said the bloc believed Russia’s attacks “amount to a war crime”. “Indiscriminately targeting people in a cowardly, heinous hail of missiles on civilian targets is indeed a further escalation,” the spokesperson said.
The attacks follow several months in which the Ukrainian capital was not targeted, leading to a relative return to normality in the city. The last attack on Kyiv was in June. But unlike previous attacks that mostly hit Kyiv’s outskirts, Monday’s strikes targeted several locations in the very centre of the city.
Witnesses saw a huge crater at one of the city centre’s intersections and nearby cars completely wrecked, blackened and pitted with shrapnel.
Meanwhile, Associated Press journalists in the centre of Dnipro city saw the bodies of people killed at an industrial site on the city’s outskirts. Windows in the area had been blown out and glass littered the street.
In Lviv, energy infrastructure was hit, the regional governor, Maksym Kozytskyi, said.
Russia abandoned an early advance on Kyiv in the face of fierce resistance bolstered by western arms. Since then, Moscow and its proxies have focused on the south and Donbas, an eastern territory made up of Luhansk and its neighbour Donetsk, deploying overwhelming artillery in some of the heaviest ground fighting in Europe since the second world war.
Recent fighting has focused on the regions just north of Crimea, including Zaporizhzhia, where six missiles were launched overnight on Saturday from Russian-occupied areas of the Zaporizhzhia region.
Oleksandr Kovalenko, a military analyst and head of the website Information Resistance, told the website of Espreso TV, a digital broadcaster well known in Ukraine, that Russia may intensify attacks on civilian targets after the bridge explosion.
“This probably means missile attacks on border areas – Sumy and Chernihiv regions. It could also mean using missiles and [Iranian-made] Shahed-136 drones to hit even deeper into Ukrainian territory,” he said.