Russia launched a large-scale missile attack on Ukraine on Friday, striking several cities including Kyiv, the capital. Ukraine’s armed forces said in a Friday evening update that Russian forces fired more than 100 missiles throughout the country and staged 12 air and 20 shelling attacks. The Facebook post said 61 cruise missiles were destroyed.
Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko said 10 Russian missiles had been shot down over the capital after sirens blared during the morning rush hour and weary civilians took shelter. It was the first attack on Kyiv in two weeks.
Energy minister German Galushchenko said Russia had hit power facilities in six regions with missiles and drones, causing blackouts across most of Ukraine, Reuters reported. Ukrainian prime minister Denys Shmyhal said Ukraine was without 44% of nuclear generation and 75% of thermal power capacity, according to Reuters.
Russia’s defence ministry confirmed its forces carried out a “massive strike” on critically important energy facilities of Ukraine’s military-industrial complex on Friday. In a daily update on Saturday, the ministry did not identify the energy facilities it claimed to have hit. It said the strike had also blocked the transport of foreign weapons and ammunition by rail to battlegrounds in Ukraine.
The attacks came a day after Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy ended a tour of European allies to lobby leaders for long-range weapons and fighter jets. “London, Paris, Brussels – everywhere I spoke these past few days about how to strengthen our soldiers. There are very important understandings and we received good signals,” he said in his nightly video address. “This concerns long-range missiles and tanks and the next level of our cooperation - fighter aircraft.”
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner mercenary group, has said it could take two years for Russia to fully control the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in eastern Ukraine, two regions whose capture Moscow has stated as a key goal of the war. “If we have to get to the Dnipro, then it will take about three years,” Prigozhin added, referring to a larger area that would extend to the vast Dnipro River that runs roughly north to south, bisecting Ukraine.
Russian forces must capture the Ukrainian stronghold of Bakhmut to proceed with their campaign, Prigozhin said in the same interview, while acknowledging that Ukrainian troops were mounting fierce resistance. Russian forces have been attempting to encircle and capture Bakhmut, a city in the eastern Donbas region, which has become the focal point of Ukrainian resistance to Russia’s invasion and of Moscow’s drive to regain battlefield momentum.
Ukraine has officially asked the Netherlands for F-16 fighter jets, its air force has said. The Dutch defence minister, Kajsa Ollongren, confirmed the request, saying: “We need to discuss the availability of the F-16 with the Americans and other allies.”
Any decision to supply fighter jets to Ukraine must come from Nato, Poland’s prime minister said. Mateusz Morawiecki said “some countries” at an EU summit in Brussels did not agree with his proposals about deliveries of ammunition to Kyiv. He added that Poland was “not excluding” closing further border crossings with Belarus, citing “growing tensions with Belarus – and they are being instrumentalised by the Russians and the Kremlin”.
Russia is ready for negotiations with Ukraine, but without preconditions, state media have reported the Russian deputy foreign minister, Sergey Vershinin, as saying. In an interview with state-run Zvezda television, Vershinin said it was not Ukraine, but the US and the EU that should make the decision on talks with Russia. Ukraine’s presidential adviser, Mykhailo Podolyak, who headed the country’s negotiating team in the early phases of the conflict, said “talks are out of the question”.
Half of Russia’s main battle tanks in Ukraine are likely to have been captured or destroyed in combat, a senior US defence official has said. Celeste Wallander, the assistant defence secretary for international security affairs, did not provide an exact figure for the number of tanks lost since Russia invaded last February but her estimate comes as Ukraine is set to receive an influx of heavy western tanks from its supporters.
The “increasingly direct rivalry between the Russian ministry of defence and Wagner” is likely a “key factor” in the alleged termination of the Russian mercenary group’s prisoner recruitment drive, the UK’s ministry of defence has said. Wagner founder, Yevgeny Prigozhin, said on Thursday that the group had “completely stopped” recruiting prisoners to fight in Ukraine. The MoD intelligence update states that the regular Russian military had “likely now also deployed the vast majority of the reservists called up under ‘partial mobilisation”.
Two Russian cruise missiles entered the airspace of Moldova and Romania, Ukraine said. Gen Valerii Zaluzhnyi, commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces, said the Kalibr rockets crossed into Moldova at 10.18am local time on Friday. They then flew into Romania at 10.33am at the intersection of the state border before recrossing into western Ukraine, he said.
Moldova confirmed at least one missile had overflown its airspace and summoned the Russian ambassador over the incident. It is not the first time Russia has sent its missiles into Moldova, with the conflict in danger of spilling out across the region. On Friday, Moldova’s pro-EU government resigned, adding to the sense of crisis.
Romania’s foreign ministry categorically denied an incursion occurred. It said the Russian cruise missiles came to within 35km (22 miles) of the country’s north-eastern border but did not violate its territory. Two MiG-21 aircraft on a training flight were diverted to monitor the area, it said.
The US has “no indication” of a direct military threat by Russia to Moldova or Romania at this time, US state department spokesperson Vedant Patel said. “We maintain close contact and communication with our Moldovan partners and Romanian allies,” he added.
US president Joe Biden announced he would mark one year since Russia’s invasion by visiting Poland, Ukraine’s neighbour and Nato ally. The White House said the US president would visit on 20-22 February and make a speech to mark “Russia’s brutal and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, addressing how the United States has rallied the world to support the people of Ukraine as they defend their freedom and democracy”.
Andriy Yermak, the head of the Ukrainian president’s office, has said he and Volodymyr Zelenskiy visited the Turkish embassy in Kyiv to commemorate the victims of Monday’s earthquake in Turkey and Syria. Ukraine has sent 88 rescue experts to help search flattened buildings for survivors, erect tents and offer first aid. The team includes specialists in search and rescue operations, doctors, dog handlers and firefighters.
A group of 35 countries will demand that Russian and Belarusian athletes are banned from the 2024 Paris Olympics, according to Lithuania’s sports minister, Jurgita Šiugždinienė. The International Olympic Committee recently moved away from having an outright ban on athletes from Russia and Belarus and is investigating ways they can qualify for the Olympics under a neutral flag.
Russia’s sports minister, Oleg Matytsin, has said Ukraine’s call to ban Russian athletes from the 2024 Paris Olympics was “unacceptable”, state media are reporting. He described the call as “a blatant desire to destroy the unity of international sport and the international Olympic movement”.
A proposed resolution for adoption by the UN’s general assembly has underlined the need for peace ensuring Ukraine’s “sovereignty, independence, unity and territorial integrity”. The draft resolution from supporters of Ukraine, on the eve of the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, is broader and less detailed than Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s 10-point peace plan he announced in November.
Marina Ovsyannikova, the former Russian state TV editor who interrupted a live news broadcast to protest against the start of the Ukraine war, has described her “chaotic” escape from house arrest in Moscow and how she fled across Europe to seek asylum in France.
Zemfira, one of Russia’s most popular singers, has been placed on a list of “foreign agents” on grounds that she supported Ukraine and criticised Russia’s “special military operation” in that country, according to the Russian justice ministry. The ministry has added several other people to its “foreign agents” list, including opposition politician Dmitry Gudkov, political analyst Abbas Gallyamov, and activists Aleksandra Kazantseva and Tatyana Nazambaeva for “LGBT propaganda”.
Reuters and Agence France-Presse contributed to this report
