Vladimir Putin's Russia has targeted bombs on a dam in an attempt to flood President Volodymyr Zelensky's home town, Ukraine claims.
The city of Kryvyi Rih is around 90 miles southwest of the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro and was hit with eight cruise missiles late on Wednesday, September 14.
The water system was damaged in the attacks and streets in the city were flooded as the Inhulets river rose by around 2.5 metres.
Zelensky claimed the dam "had no military value" and that the Russian attacks were done by "scoundrels" who "escaped from the battlefield".
The president addressed Russia directly in his address on Wednesday, switching from speaking Ukrainian.
He said: "Your missile attacks today, Russian missiles targeting Kryvyi Rih, the dam of the Karachunivske reservoir, the objects that have no military value at all, in fact hitting hundreds of thousands of ordinary civilians, is another reason why Russia will lose.
"You are weaklings waging a war against civilians; scoundrels who, having fled the battlefield, are trying to do harm from somewhere far away."
The address was released after news broke he had been in a car accident in Kyiv in which he was not seriously hurt.
Spokesperson Sergii Nikiforov said: "The president was examined by a doctor, no serious injuries were found."
Authorities in Kryvyi Rih are working to try and repair the damage caused by the missiles and the flooding.
Prominent Ukrainian MP Inna Sovsun said: "The water pumping station was destroyed. The river broke through the dam and overflowed its banks. Residential buildings are just a few meters away from the river."
Before the war, Kryvyi Rih was a city home to around 650,000 people and the largest in central Ukraine.
As an angered Zelensky called the cruise missile attacks brazen and senseless, the Institue for the Study of War explained they may have been a tactical attempt by Russia to "damage Ukrainian pontoon bridges further downstream" as Ukraine mounts a counteroffensive in Kherson.
The successful and swift counteroffensive has seen Russian troops on the back foot in what they say is an attempt to "regroup".
Key strategic towns like Izium and Kupiansk have been retaken as almost the entire region of Kharkiv was liberated along with around 400 settlements,
Visiting Izium, Zelensky added: "Ukrainians once again managed to do what many considered impossible.
"The 150,000 Ukrainians who remained in this territory feel again now what an ordinary, safe, normal life is like."
Ukraine claims to have retaken around 3,088 sq miles of territory in the Kharkiv region, an area larger than Lincolnshire.
