Ukrainian officials have accused Russia of launching a barrage of strikes on civilian targets across the country, including in the capital Kyiv.
Mayor Vladimir Klitschko reported two residential buildings were hit and Kyrylo Tymoshenko of the President's Office has shared a video of the aftermath of the strike with buildings engulfed in flames.
The city of Kryvyi Rih, Poltava and Cherkasy regions have been hit, according to their respective city and regional heads.
Hitting residential buildings constitutes a war crime and the barrage from Moscow’s depleting missile stock happened within hours of the Ukrainian President celebrating Kherson as akin to D-Day starting the end of World War II.
The explosions sent plumes of smoke rising above the capital and sirens were heard across the city as medics raced to Kyiv’s Pechersk district, a wealthy area that is home to many embassies.
At least four missiles were shot down over the capital, city officials said and the air attacks also smashed into targets in Lviv in the far west and Kharkiv — as the entire country was put on air-raid alert and braced for rising civilian casualties.
On Twitter, it was claimed that Russia launched more than 100 missiles - targeting Ukraine's energy infrastructure.
At least one person has been killed after one missile hit a Kyiv building, the reports say.
Electricity is out in half of Kyiv, 80 per cent of Lviv, as well as parts of Odesa, Mykolaiv, Dnipro.
The US ambassador to Ukraine, Bridget A Brink has described the series of attacks launched today by Russia on Ukraine as “another round of cruel attacks.”
Several missile strikes also hit Kryvyi Rih, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's native city and emergency services battled to rescue survivors.
Both sides are now in a race against time as winter approaches to replenish ammo and weapons stocks amid fears Winter freezes will cause more battlefield casualties.
It is believed Russia has just 120 Iskander missiles left and a mere month’s supply remaining of artillery shells available for the battlefield.
Andriy Yermak, an adviser to President Zelensky wrote on Twitter: “Does anyone seriously think that the Kremlin really wants peace? It wants obedience. But at the end of the day, terrorists always lose.”
A Western official said: “Munitions supply is a big, limiting factor for both sides and that’s why we’ve seen the Russians going to great lengths to replenish.
“The Ukrainians are doing the same thing. We are still expecting to grind and it to be largely static, expecting neither side to win or lose and that extends all the way through 2023.
“If people are expecting the collapse of forces on either side we can’t see anything which would indicate that from now through to the end of the year. Neither side is in such a condition for their forces to collapse.”
