Several explosions rocked central Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities in the early hours of Monday, killing civilians and destroying infrastructure in the country.
This is coming a day after an explosion on a bridge linking Russia to occupied Crimea sparked calls for reprisals in Moscow.
President Vladimir Putin had declared the explosion on the bridge to be a terrorist attack.
The explosions on Monday also came as the UN General Assembly was set to open debate on a draft resolution condemning Russia’s annexation of four Ukrainian regions.
Cruise missiles tore into busy intersections, parks and tourist sites in the centre of downtown Kyiv, with an intensity unseen even when Russian forces attempted to capture the capital early in the war.
According to Reuters, explosions were also reported in Lviv, Ternopil and Zhytomyr in Ukraine’s West, Dnipro, and Kremenchuk in Central Ukraine, Zaporizhzhia in the South and Kharkiv in the East.
Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said the rush hour attacks appeared to have been deliberately timed to kill people.
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In Kyiv, the body of a man in jeans lay in a street at a major intersection, surrounded by flaming cars. In a park, a soldier cut through the clothes of a woman who lay in the grass to try to treat her wounds. Two other women were bleeding nearby.
A huge crater gaped next to a children’s playground in a central Kyiv park. The remains of an apparent missile were buried, smoking in the mud.
More volleys of missiles struck the capital again later in the morning. Pedestrians huddled for shelter at the entrance of Metro stations and inside parking garages.
By mid-morning, Ukraine’s defence ministry said Russia had fired 75 cruise missiles, and Ukraine’s air defences had shot down 41 of them. Kyiv city police said at least five people had been killed and 12 wounded in the capital.
Security camera footage posted online showed a cloud of shrapnel and flame engulfing a glass-bottomed footbridge across parkland in the city centre, one of Kyiv’s most popular tourist sites. The bridge appeared to have been empty at the time.
“They are trying to destroy us and wipe us off the face of the earth. The air raid sirens do not subside throughout Ukraine. There are missiles hitting. Unfortunately, there are dead and wounded,” Zelenskiy said on the Telegram messaging app.
He later said the strikes had two main targets; energy infrastructure, and people.
“Such a time and such targets were specially chosen to cause as much damage as possible,” the President said.
There was no immediate word from Moscow on what it was targetting. Russia denies deliberately targetting civilians.
“Putin’s only tactic is a terror on peaceful Ukrainian cities, but he will not break Ukraine down. This is also his response to all appeasers who want to talk with him about peace: Putin is a terrorist who talks with missiles,” Foreign Minister, Dmytro Kuleba, tweeted.
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