Russian missiles landed on infrastructure targets across Ukraine on Tuesday morning as Moscow stepped up what looked like a deliberate campaign to destroy electricity and water facilities before winter.
Russia’s missiles hit a power and water supply in Zhytomyr, a city of 263,000 people, and two explosions rocked an energy facility in the southeastern city of Dnipro, a city of nearly 1 million, causing serious damage, according to Kyrylo Tymoshenko, a Ukrainian presidential aide as quoted by Reuters.
In the southern Ukrainian port of Mykolaiv, a missile slammed into an apartment building killing at least one man, a witness said as quoted by Reuters, and blasts were heard and smoke seen rising in Kyiv, the capital.
There were also reports of power facilities being targeted in Kharkiv, a city with a pre-war population of 1.43 million people, close to the Russian border.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy accused Russia of terrorizing and killing civilians with the air attacks, which came a day after drone strikes on Kyiv and other cities killed at least four people.
“Ukraine is under fire by the occupiers. They continue to do what they do best – terrorize and kill civilians,” Zelenskiy wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
“The terrorist state will not change anything for itself with such actions. It will only confirm its destructive and murderous essence, for which it will certainly be held to account,” he added.
According to Reuters report, Russia earlier this month named General Sergei Suvorikin as the overall commander of what Moscow calls its “special operation” in Ukraine. Suvorikin served in Syria and Chechnya.