Putin’s revenge: Russia launches ‘everything it has’ in its most intense aerial attack of Ukrainian cities days after Vladimir’s forces suffered humiliating loss of a warship in occupied Crimea

Russia launched ‘everything it has’ on Friday in its most intense aerial attack since the start of the war, with missiles raining down on Ukrainian cities including Kyiv.

The overnight attacks came days after Ukraine struck a Russian warship in the occupied Crimean port of Feodosia in a major setback for the Russian navy.

It is seen as the most intense aerial attack of the brutal and bloody war Vladimir Putin unleashed 22 months ago, killing at least 27 civilians and injuring at least 144 across the country.

‘Russia attacked with everything it has in its arsenal,’ President Zelensky said on Telegram. 

Russia’s army said on Friday that it had struck all its targets in dozens of attacks on Ukraine over a week. 

It said it had ‘carried out 50 group strikes and one massive strike’ and ‘all targets were hit,’ adding that it was aiming at military facilities.

Video released on social media appeared to show a huge fireball rising from the top of a high rise in Kyiv. 

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said Moscow‘s latest missile strikes on Ukraine showed that Putin ‘will stop at nothing to achieve his aim of eradicating freedom and democracy’.

‘We will not let him win. We must continue to stand with Ukraine – for as long as it takes,’ he added on X, formerly Twitter. 

Russia tried to overwhelm Ukraine’s air defences across most major cities. It launched 122 missiles and dozens of drones against Ukrainian targets, officials said on Friday. 

The Ukrainian air force intercepted 87 of the missiles and 27 of the Shahed-type drones overnight, Ukraine’s military chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi said.

An unknown number of people were buried under rubble, Ukrainian officials said. 

Zelensky said the Kremlin’s forces used a wide variety of weapons, including ballistic and cruise missiles.

Buildings damaged in six cities included warehouses, a shopping mall and a maternity hospital, according to officials.

A metro station building used as a shelter in Ukraine’s capital was damaged, Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko said on the Telegram messenger app.

Sergiy Popko, head of Kyiv’s military administration, said debris fell in two parts of the city and there was also a fire in a residential apartment building.

The city’s Lukyanivska metro station, the platforms of which were being used as an air raid shelter, was damaged and its entrance closed to passengers, Popko said.

Several other residential and warehouse buildings were damaged.

The mayor of the western city of Lviv, Andrii Sadovyi, said one person was killed and eight injured and three schools and a kindergarten were damaged in a drone attack in the region.

Several dozen missiles were launched towards Kyiv during the night, with more than 30 of them intercepted, Popko said. 

The attack started a fire at a warehouse in Kyiv’s Podil district where five people were reportedly pulled from the rubble. Three people were killed in the capital.

Twenty-two Russian strikes were recorded in Kharkiv, damaging a hospital, residential buildings and an industrial facility, Mayor Ihor Terekhov said in televised comments.

Drones and missiles struck at least five other Ukrainian cities on Friday, including Lviv in the west and Odesa in the south, the cities’ mayors and police said.

In Odesa, falling drone wreckage started a fire at a multi-story residential building, according to the regional head, Oleh Kiper. 

Two people were killed and 15, including two children, were injured over the course of the Odesa attack, he said. 

Ukraine’s southern command said 14 attack drones had been destroyed in the south of the country and there were no casualties reported.

The onslaught and wanton destruction was seen as revenge for Ukraine’s Storm Shadow Boxing Day missile strike in Crimea on the Novocherkassk landing ship, in which at least 33 are suspected to have died, with dozens wounded.

Ukraine was being attacked simultaneously by Russian Kinzhal, Iskander, S-300s, Kh-22 and Kh-32 missiles, with 18 strategic bombers deployed as well as Iranian-supplied Shahed drones, according to Ukrainian sources.

Some reports said Kalibr missiles were also used.

‘We have never seen so many targets on our monitor at the same time,’ said Ukrainian air force spokesman Yuriy Ignat.

In Kyiv, more than a dozen huge blasts were heard. One hit a high rise tower, triggering a huge explosion.

The aviation production plant Artem – which produces air-to-air guided missiles – appeared to be on fire, with black smoke emerging from its site.

‘Explosions in Kyiv. Air defence operating. Stay in shelters,’ Klitschko said in a post on Telegram. 

‘According to preliminary information, an apartment building was hit in Lviv. There are victims. A fire broke out in one of the city’s lyceums. Probably due to the fall of missile debris,’ said the Lviv Regional Administration.

The Yavoriv military training ground near the city was hit, it was reported.

Five people were killed and 20 injured in the eastern city of Dnipro where four maternity hospital patients were rescued from a fire, officials said. 

The Apollo shopping mall in Dnipro was hit and fatalities were reported.

In Zaporizhzhia, on the shores on the Dnipro river, governor Yuriy Malashko reported seven dead and 13 wounded. 

In northeastern Ukraine, Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov said the city was subjected to at least three waves of aerial attacks overnight that included S-300 and Kh-21 missile launches. One person was killed and at least nine injured, officials said. 

Kharkiv resident Olena Kurylo, who is known as the ‘Face of the War’ after her bloody image was shown around the world at the start of the conflict in February 2022, said on Friday: ‘None of us has slept properly this December in Kharkiv and the region, but this was the worst night with more than 23 missiles and constant air raid alerts since 3am.

‘My daughter is in a shelter with her boyfriend, they just about had time to pick up their cats and run there.

‘I am hiding in the basement floor of my house, reading messages from friends from all over the country: Lviv, Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia, Odesa…

‘None of them slept, again and again they grabbed their children and elderly, and ran.

‘I’ve been through so many emotions these past two years – from hope that our [Russian] “brothers” simply can’t do this to us, to shock and tears, to anger and now hatred.’

She added: ‘This cannot go on. They can’t just go on killing us before the rest of the world, like this is something they have the right to do. They don’t! They have no right!

‘Please hear us from under the missiles, from under their endless death drones, from under their shelling.’

The UN’s humanitarian envoy for Ukraine denounced on Friday the latest wave of Russian attacks.

‘For the Ukrainian people, this is another unacceptable example of the horrifying reality they are faced with and which made 2023 another year of enormous suffering,’ Denise Brown said on social media.

Ukraine presidential aide Andriy Yermak said Kyiv needed ‘more support and strength to stop this terror’.

‘Missiles are flying at our cities again and civilians are being targeted,’ he wrote.

Ukraine’s foreign ministry said that a Russian missile attack on Friday proved there could be no talk of truce with Moscow.

‘Russia is not considering any other scenarios than the complete destruction of Ukraine,’ the ministry said in a statement.

The ministry of defence said on Friday that the UK is sending around 200 air defence missiles to Ukraine to help protect civilians and infrastructure from Russian drones and bombing.

‘(Russian President Vladimir) Putin is testing Ukraine’s defences and the West’s resolve, hoping that he can clutch victory from the jaws of defeat. But he is wrong,’ Defence Secretary Grant Shapps said.

The air defence missiles, manufactured in the UK by defence contractor MBDA, are designed to be launched from aircraft including Typhoon and F-35 fighter jets, the defence ministry said.

Zelensky on Thursday thanked the United States for releasing the last remaining package of weapons under existing authorisation, as uncertainty surrounds further aid to his war-torn country.

Zelensky had warned that any change in policy from the US – Kyiv’s main backer – could have a strong impact on the course of the war.