Russia shatters Ukraine holiday season with massive missile barrage

KYIV – Russia fired more than 100 missiles at Ukraine on Friday, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said, striking multiple residential buildings, a shopping center and other civilian infrastructure in the biggest barrage in an otherwise quiet winter.

The scale of the attack confirmed what many in Ukraine have feared for months – that Russia was conserving its missile stocks throughout the fall for massive strikes in the winter. Officials in Kyiv have also warned that stalled U.S. security assistance, which includes ammunition for U.S.-made air-defense systems, could embolden the Russians and place Ukrainian cities in peril.

Britain’s Defense Minister Grant Shapps said his country was sending hundreds of air-defense missiles to Ukraine to ensure it “has what it needs to defend itself from Putin’s barbaric bombardment.”

“Putin is testing Ukraine’s defense and the West’s resolve, hoping he can clutch victory from the jaws of defeat. But he is wrong,” Shapps said in a statement.

The Russians used a mix of ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and drones, Zelenskyy said. Unlike a year ago, Ukraine’s improved, Western-provided air-defense systems, which include the Patriot system, contained the damage, shooting down most of the 110 missiles, the president added. Last year, millions of Ukrainians experienced outages when Russia repeatedly pounded the power grid.

One of the missiles appears likely to have entered the airspace of NATO-member Poland, said General Maciej Klisz, operational commander of Polish armed forces, Reuters reported. Klisz said the object most likely left Polish airspace after spending less than three minutes over the country’s territory and went back over Ukraine.

NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said he spoke with Polish President Andrzej Duda about the incident. “#NATO stands in solidarity with our valued Ally, is monitoring the situation & we will remain in contact as the facts are established,” Stoltenberg wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

In a statement Friday, NATO said that its air forces “across Europe” intercepted Russian military aircraft over 300 times in 2023, with most intercepts occurring over the Baltic Sea.

“Russia’s war against Ukraine has created the most dangerous security situation in Europe in decades,” acting NATO spokesperson Dylan White said. “NATO fighter jets are on duty around the clock, ready to scramble in case of suspicious or unannounced flights near the airspace of our Allies.”

About 18 bombers launched missiles, Ukraine’s Air Force said. Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, the head of Ukraine’s armed forces, said 87 missiles and 27 strike drones were shot down out of 158 total.

The attacks – intended to exhaust Ukraine’s beefed-up air defense, according to officials – hit sites across the country, from Lviv in western Ukraine to Odessa in the south to the capital of Kyiv to Kharkiv and Dnipro in the east. Ukrainian Air Force spokesman Yuriy Ihnat told Ukrainian media there had never been so many targets at one time.

“This time we saw a large amount of rockets,” Ihnat said. “The screen was practically red – the monitors. They were spreading out over the whole of Ukraine. They flew with detours. Some rockets were flying in circles and would then fly on to their target.”

At least 18 people across the country were killed in the attacks, and more than 132 were injured. Affected buildings included a shopping mall in central Dnipro as well as a nearby maternity ward, which had its windows blasted out and blackened. The Ministry of Health confirmed that patients and staff at the maternity ward had taken shelter, and none were injured.

“We understood at once what was happening,” said Natalia Karlova, 65, who lives near the maternity ward. “Everything fell down in our apartment. When we heard the first explosion, we hid in the corridor. If we would’ve been in the room, we would be injured for sure.”

By Friday afternoon, her street was loud with the banging of hammers, plywood going up over shattered windows. The smell of smoke hung in the air. Some neighbors leaned out the open frames, smoking or throwing trash bags of rubble to the ground, where orange-vested workers were clearing debris.

“What can we do?” Karlova said.

Around the corner, employees at a clothing store near the shopping mall were stuffing merchandise into bags for storage. In one bag, the feet of several mannequins poked in the air.

On Facebook, Sergii A. Ryzhenko – chief physician at Mechnikov Hospital in Dnipro – wrote that one of the victims injured in the shelling was a 25-year-old who’d gone to the shopping center for bread and cigarettes. He was immediately taken into surgery, he said, and they were “praying … that he will survive.”

“Terrible war kills ordinary Ukrainians,” Ryzhenko wrote.

A factory in central Kyiv was also targeted, and Mayor Vitali Klitschko said Friday morning that people were believed to still be trapped under the rubble. Thirteen apartment buildings and three schools in Lviv were damaged, local authorities said.

In the Lviv region, a critical infrastructure facility was hit, the president’s office said, declining to say which one. Four regions experienced power outages as a result of the strikes.

“The people are shocked, such a misfortune during such a festive season,” said Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovyi, adding that some children would not be able to return to school after the holidays.

Ihnat, the air force spokesman, said that it was unclear what exactly the Russians were targeting, as some missiles were intercepted by Ukrainian air defense, and damage was caused by falling fragments.

“When certain objects get hit, you can conclude that they were trying to aim for it,” Ihnat said. “But there are also things like debris.”

“If a flying rocket is hit, this is a large mass of metal, burning rocket fuel and so forth,” he said. “And the explosives can also still be undetonated. So when the debris of this rocket falls down, it can still have serious consequences on the ground. The work of air defense, even when it’s successful, can still have serious consequences.”

Russia’s Ministry of Defense announced Friday that it had carried out a “massive strike with high precision weapons and unmanned aerial vehicles” against Ukraine’s military infrastructure, including airfields, ammunition and fuel storage sites. It stated that all targeted facilities were destroyed. The statement could not be independently verified.

Volker Türk, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, said he was shocked at the attacks on Ukraine.

“International humanitarian law explicitly prohibits attacks deliberately targeting civilian objects, as well as indiscriminate attacks, under any circumstances,” he said in a statement.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said in a post on X that he wished “those sounds of explosions in Ukraine could be heard all around the world. In all major capitals, headquarters, and parliaments, which are currently debating further support for Ukraine.”