Several explosions have rocked Kyiv overnight following months of relative calm in the Ukrainian capital.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says several people have been killed and injured following multiple strikes on cities across the country.
While the death toll currently stands at five, it is “very likely to go up considerably,” an onsite reporter said.
“The Kyiv city mayor, Vitaly Klitschko, told residents in the city that they should stay in shelters and if there’s no urgent need, to stay at home. The police have blocked off a lot of central Kyiv so emergency services can do their work.”
“Kyiv hasn’t experienced anything like this in months; people stopped paying attention to the air raid sirens, so it’s a very, very different reality this Monday morning.
“In fact, I would say nothing like this has happened since the start of the war, and even at the beginning of the war, there weren’t as many centre strikes as have taken place today.
“There’s no doubt here in Kyiv that this is Vladimir Putin’s revenge for the Crimea bridge, and he’s taking it out on some of the softest targets there are, which are civilians,” the reporter said.
Ukraine’s president has accused Russia of deliberately timing missile strikes in several cities throughout the country to inflict the greatest possible number of casualties.
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Zelensky said Russia had also targeted Ukraine’s energy infrastructure during the attacks.
“They want panic and chaos, they want to destroy our energy system,” he said in a video post that showed him outside his presidential office.
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“The second target is people. Such a time and such targets were specially chosen to cause as much damage as possible.”
Russian forces launched at least 75 missiles at Ukraine during a flurry of strikes on several cities on Monday morning, the head of the Ukrainian military has said.
“The terrorist country, Russia, has carried out massive missile and air strikes on the territory of Ukraine, also using attack drones. In the morning, the aggressor launched 75 missiles. 41 of them were shot down by our air defence,” General Valeriy Zaluzhny said on social media.
