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 today launched ‘everything it has’ 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 Putin unleashed 22 months ago.

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

Ukraine’s prosecutor general said the latest wave of Russian strikes today had killed at least 16 people and injured almost a hundred.

‘This morning, the enemy fired over 150 missiles and attack drones at peaceful Ukrainian cities. We know about 16 dead. 97 wounded, including at least two children aged six and eight years old,’ Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin said on social media.

Russia tried to overwhelm Ukraine’s air defences across most major cities. It launched 122 missiles and 36 drones against Ukrainian targets, officials said today. 

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, and scores were reported injured.

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.

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

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

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. 

In the city’s northern Podil district, a warehouse measuring around 3,000 square metres (32,300 square feet) caught fire.

At the scene there was a strong smell of burning plastic as firefighters wearing oxygen masks tackled the blaze and a huge column of black smoke billowed into the sky.

There were believed to be 10 people trapped under the rubble, said the head of the city’s military administration, Sergiy Popko.

The city’s Lukyanivska metro station, whose platforms 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.

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 today, including Lviv in the west, as well as Odesa in the south, the cities’ mayors and police said.

In the southern port of Odesa, a high-rise building caught fire after being struck by debris from a downed drone, the city’s mayor said.

‘As a result of another enemy attack, one of the high-rise buildings was damaged. The fire was promptly extinguished,’ mayor Gennadiy Trukhanov said on social media.

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 large landing ship, in which at least 33 are suspected to have died and 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.

Andriy Yermak, head of Volodymyr Zelensky’s office, said: ‘There are dead people who were killed by Russian missiles today, which were launched at civilian objects and residential buildings.

‘The enemy’s attack continues.’

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.

‘There is a fire on the territory of warehouses in the Podilsk district,’ said the Kyiv City Military Administration.

‘According to preliminary information there are wounded people. Information is being clarified.’

Some were under the rubble, it was reported.

‘Emergency services are on their way to the scene.’

Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko said: ‘There are currently five people wounded in the capital.

‘In the Podolsk district, doctors treated two men on the spot.

‘One victim was hospitalised in Svyatoshynsky District and two in Shevchenkivskyi.

‘The explosion damaged the building of the Lukyanovskaya metro station. The station works as a shelter.’

‘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.

In Dnipro, the Apollo shopping mall was hit and fatalities were reported.

Mayor Borys Filatov said: ‘There are dead and injured as a result of the morning attack on Dnipro.’

Video showed a maternity hospital that was hit.

In Kharkiv, regional governor Oleh Syniehubov said eight were wounded in the territory.

‘As of now, as a result of the occupiers’ strikes on Kharkiv, one person has died, a man of about 35 years old.

‘Eight people were injured, doctors are providing assistance on the spot.’

In Odesa, debris from a kamikaze drone damaged a high-rise building.

‘A fire broke out,’ stated the head of Odesa Regional Administration Oleg Kiper.

Information about the victims is being verified.

In 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 war in February 2022,  said today: ‘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.

‘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 today denounced 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 today 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

Zelensky yesterday 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.