Overnight, Russia fired dozens of missiles at Kiev and other regions of Ukraine, hitting the country’s civilian infrastructure and defense industry in one of the biggest strikes this year as its forces continued to conquer more territory in the east.
General Valeriy Zaluzhny, commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian armed forces, said Russia had launched 81 missiles of different varieties from the air, land and sea, as well as eight Iranian-made attack drones. Four of the drones and 34 cruise missiles were intercepted, General Zaluzhny said.
???????? Shortly after midnight, air raid sirens blared across #Ukraine. Out of the 81 missiles fired by Russia, 34 were shot down. Hear more from @EmmanuelleChaze reporting from Kyiv, one of the targeted cities ⤵️ pic.twitter.com/oMMxSdvFXH
— FRANCE 24 English (@France24_en) March 9, 2023
In a statement on Thursday, Russia’s Defense Ministry called this new, expansive missile barrage a retaliatory strike for cross-border sabotage and terrorist attacks earlier this month in the Bryansk border region.
The missiles struck as far west as the Lviv region, a rarity in the war, reportedly resulting in the first civilian deaths there for a long time.
“In response to the March 2 terrorist actions organized by the Kiev regime in the Bryansk region, the Russian armed forces launched a massive retaliatory strike,” the defense ministry said. He also confirmed that he had used one or more hypersonic missiles in the attack :
“Long-range, air, sea and land-based high-precision weapons, including the Kinzhal hypersonic missile system , have affected key elements of the Ukrainian military infrastructure, enterprises of the military-industrial complex and the energy structures that support them,” the ministry said. She said. “All assigned targets have been hit.”
And the mayor of Kiev Vitali Klitschko indicated that because of the Russian missiles 40% of the capital’s population remains without heating. The country’s second largest city, Kharkiv, is now without electricity, water or heat.
The March 2 terrorist act for which Moscow retaliated involved alleged groups of well-armed Ukrainian nationalists crossing into Russia’s southern Bryansk region and opening fire about the villages killing two civilians and wounding a 10-year-old boy.
It should be remembered that on the Russian side, the residential districts of the city of Donetsk are hit daily by the Ukrainian forces, even with the dispersal of hundreds of landmines petal. Furthermore, most of the casualties and destruction in the disputed Ukrainian cities were caused by the Kiev forces’ choice of urban warfare and the presence of artillery and tank positions near the buildings or in the buildings themselves.