By JOHN LEICESTER and JAMES LaPORTA (Associated Press)
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia hit Ukraine’s energy facilities Tuesday with its largest barrage of missiles to date, hitting targets across the country and causing widespread power outages. A senior US intelligence official said the missiles passed into NATO member Poland, where two people were killed.
A second person confirmed to The Associated Press that apparent Russian missiles hit a site in Poland about 15 miles from the Ukrainian border.
The Russian Defense Ministry denied being behind “any attack on targets near the Ukrainian-Polish border” and said in a statement that photos of the alleged damage “have nothing to do” with Russian weapons.
A NATO official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the alliance was looking into reports of an attack in Poland. The US National Security Council said it was also looking into the reports.
Polish government spokesman Piotr Mueller did not immediately confirm the information from the US intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the situation. But Mueller said senior leaders were holding an emergency meeting because of a “crisis situation.”
Polish media reported that two people died on Tuesday afternoon after a shell hit an area where wheat was being dried in Przewodów, a Polish village near the border with Ukraine.
Neighboring Moldova was also affected. It reported massive power outages after the attacks knocked out a key power line supplying the small country, an official said.
The rocket attacks plunged much of Ukraine into darkness and drew opposition from President Volodymr Zelenskyy, who shook his fist and declared: “We will survive everything.”
Zelenskyy said Russia fired at least 85 missiles, most of which targeted the country’s energy facilities and blacked out many cities.
Its energy minister said the attack was the “most massive” bombing of energy facilities in the nearly nine-month Russian occupation, hitting both power generation and transmission systems.
The minister, Herman Haluschenko, described the missile attacks as “another attempt at terrorist revenge” after military and diplomatic setbacks for the Kremlin. He accused Russia of “trying to cause maximum damage to our energy system on the eve of winter.”
The airstrike, which resulted in at least one death in a residential building in the capital, Kiev, followed days of euphoria in Ukraine sparked by one of its biggest military successes – last week’s recapture of the southern city of Kherson.
The power grid had already been hit by previous attacks that destroyed about 40% of the country’s power infrastructure.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has not commented on the withdrawal from Kherson since his troops withdrew in the face of a Ukrainian offensive. But the staggering scale of Tuesday’s attacks spoke volumes and hinted at anger in the Kremlin.
By striking the targets in the late afternoon, not long before dusk, the Russian military forced rescue workers to work in the dark and gave repair teams little time to assess the damage during the day.
More than a dozen regions – among them Lviv in the west, Kharkiv in the northeast and others in between – reported attacks or attempts by their air defenses to shoot down the missiles. At least a dozen regions reported power outages, affecting cities that together have millions of people. Almost half of the Kyiv region lost power, authorities said. Ukrainian Railways announced train delays across the country.
Zelenskyy warned that further attacks were possible and urged people to stay safe and seek shelter.
“Most of the hits were recorded in the center and north of the country. In the capital, the situation is very difficult”, said a senior official, Kyrylo Tymoshenko.
He said a total of 15 energy targets were damaged and claimed 70 missiles were downed. A spokesman for the Ukrainian Air Force said Russia used X-101 and X-555 cruise missiles.
As city after city reported attacks, Tymoshenko urged Ukrainians to “hang in there”.
With its battlefield losses mounting, Russia has increasingly turned to targeting Ukraine’s power grid, apparently hoping to turn the approach of winter into a weapon by leaving people in the cold and in the dark.
In Kiev, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said authorities found a body in one of three residential buildings hit in the capital, where emergency blackouts were also announced by energy provider DTEK.
Video released by a presidential aide showed a five-story, apparently residential building in Kiev on fire, with flames licking up apartments. Klitschko said air defense units also shot down several missiles.
Dutch Foreign Minister Wopke Hoekstra went to a bomb shelter in Kiev after meeting his Ukrainian counterpart and, from his safe seat, described the bombing as “a big motivation to stand by” with Ukraine .
“There can only be one answer and that is: Continue. “Keep supporting Ukraine, keep sending weapons, keep working on accountability, keep working on humanitarian aid,” he said.
Ukraine had seen a period of comparative calm since previous waves of drone and missile attacks a few weeks ago.
The attacks came as authorities were already working frantically to get Kherson back on its feet and begin investigating alleged Russian abuses there and in the surrounding area.
The southern city is without power and water, and the head of the UN human rights office’s monitoring mission in Ukraine, Matilda Bogner, on Tuesday criticized a “dire humanitarian situation” there.
Speaking from Kiev, Bogner said her teams are looking to travel to Kherson to try to verify claims of nearly 80 cases of enforced disappearances and arbitrary detention.
The head of Ukraine’s National Police, Igor Klymenko, said authorities will begin investigating reports from Kherson residents that Russian forces have set up at least three alleged torture sites in the now-liberated parts of the wider Kherson region and that ” our people may have been arrested and tortured there.”
The recapture of Kherson dealt another crushing blow to the Kremlin. Zelenskyy compared the recapture to the Allied D-Day landings in France in World War II, saying both were watershed events on the road to eventual victory.
But large parts of eastern and southern Ukraine remain under Russian control and fighting continues.
Zelenskyy warned of possible bleaker news ahead.
“Everywhere, when we liberate our land, we see one thing: Russia leaves torture chambers and mass burials behind. … How many mass graves are there in the territory that still remains under Russian control?” Zelenskyy asked.
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Associated Press writers Joanna Kozlowska in London, Jamey Keaten in Geneva, Mike Corder in The Hague, Hanna Arhirova in Kherson and Yuras Karmanau in Tallinn, Estonia contributed to this story.
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Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine: https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
