By JOHN LEICESTER and JAMES LaPORTA
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia pounded Ukraine’s vitality amenities Tuesday with its greatest barrage of missiles but, putting targets throughout the nation and inflicting widespread blackouts. A senior U.S. intelligence official mentioned missiles crossed into NATO member Poland, the place two folks had been killed.
A second individual confirmed to The Associate Press that obvious Russian missiles struck a web site in Poland about 15 miles from the Ukrainian border.
Adrienne Watson, a spokesperson for the National Security Council, mentioned on Twitter that the company had seen stories out of Poland and was working with the Polish authorities to assemble extra data.
The strikes plunged a lot of Ukraine into darkness and drew defiance from President Volodymr Zelenskyy, who shook his fist and declared: “We will survive everything.”
Polish authorities spokesman Piotr Mueller didn’t instantly verify the data however mentioned prime leaders had been holding an emergency assembly attributable to a “crisis situation.”
Polish media reported that two folks died Tuesday afternoon after a projectile struck an space the place grain was drying in Przewodów, a Polish village close to the border with Ukraine.
Neighboring Moldova was additionally affected. It reported huge energy outages after the strikes knocked out a key energy line that provides the small nation, an official mentioned.
Zelenskyy mentioned Russia fired at the least 85 missiles, most of them aimed on the nation’s energy amenities, and blacked out many cities.
“We’re working, will restore everything. We will survive everything,” the president vowed. His vitality minister mentioned the assault was “the most massive” bombardment of energy amenities within the practically 9-month-old Russian invasion, putting each energy era and transmission techniques.
The minister, Herman Haluschenko, described the missile strikes as “another attempt at terrorist revenge” after navy 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 aerial assault, which resulted in at the least one loss of life in a residential constructing within the capital, Kyiv, adopted days of euphoria in Ukraine sparked by one among its greatest navy successes — the retaking final week of the southern metropolis of Kherson.
The energy grid was already battered by earlier assaults that destroyed an estimated 40% of the nation’s vitality infrastructure.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has not commented on the retreat from Kherson since his troops pulled out within the face of a Ukrainian offensive. But the gorgeous scale of Tuesday’s strikes spoke volumes and hinted at anger within the Kremlin.
By putting targets within the late afternoon, not lengthy earlier than nightfall started to fall, the Russian navy pressured rescue staff to labor at nighttime and gave restore crews scant time to evaluate the harm by daylight.
More than a dozen areas — amongst them Lviv within the west, Kharkiv within the northeast and others in between — reported strikes or efforts by their air defenses to shoot missiles down. At least a dozen areas reported energy outages, affecting cities that collectively have hundreds of thousands of individuals. Almost half of the Kyiv area misplaced energy, authorities mentioned. Ukrainian Railways introduced nationwide practice delays.
Zelenskyy warned that extra strikes had been attainable and urged folks to remain secure and search shelter.
“Most of the hits were recorded in the center and in the north of the country. In the capital, the situation is very difficult,” mentioned a senior official, Kyrylo Tymoshenko.
He mentioned a complete of 15 vitality targets had been broken and claimed that 70 missiles had been shot down. A Ukrainian Air Force spokesman mentioned Russia used X-101 and X-555 cruise missiles.
As metropolis after metropolis reported assaults, Tymoshenko urged Ukrainians to “hang in there.”
With its battlefield losses mounting, Russia has more and more resorted to concentrating on Ukraine’s energy grid, seemingly hoping to show the strategy of winter right into a weapon by leaving folks within the chilly and darkish.
In Kyiv, Mayor Vitali Klitschko mentioned authorities discovered a physique in one among three residential buildings that had been struck within the capital, the place emergency blackouts had been additionally introduced by energy supplier DTEK.
Video printed by a presidential aide confirmed a five-story, apparently residential constructing in Kyiv on hearth, with flames licking via residences. Klitschko mentioned air protection models additionally shot down some missiles.
Dutch Foreign Minister Wopke Hoekstra took to a bomb shelter in Kyiv after assembly his Ukrainian counterpart and, from his place of security, described the bombardment as “an enormous motivation to keep standing shoulder-to-shoulder” with Ukraine.
“There can be only one answer, and that is: Keep going. Keep supporting Ukraine, keep delivering weapons, keep working on accountability, keep working on humanitarian aid,” he mentioned.
Ukraine had seen a interval of comparative calm since earlier waves of drone and missile assaults a number of weeks in the past.
The strikes got here as authorities had been already working furiously to get Kherson again on its ft and starting to analyze alleged Russian abuses there and within the surrounding space.
The southern metropolis is with out energy and water, and the pinnacle of the U.N. human rights workplace’s monitoring mission in Ukraine, Matilda Bogner, on Tuesday decried a “dire humanitarian situation” there.
Speaking from Kyiv, Bogner mentioned her groups want to journey to Kherson to attempt to confirm allegations of practically 80 instances of pressured disappearances and arbitrary detention.
The head of the National Police of Ukraine, Igor Klymenko, mentioned authorities are to begin investigating stories from Kherson residents that Russian forces arrange at the least three alleged torture websites in now-liberated elements of the broader Kherson area and that “our people may have been detained and tortured there.”
The retaking of Kherson dealt one other stinging blow to the Kremlin. Zelenskyy likened the recapture to the Allied landings in France on D-Day in World War II, saying each had been watershed occasions on the street to eventual victory.
But giant elements of jap and southern Ukraine stay underneath Russian management, and preventing continues.
Zelenskyy warned of attainable extra grim information forward.
“Everywhere, when we liberate our land, we see one thing — Russia leaves behind torture chambers and mass burials. … How many mass graves are there in the territory that still remains under the control of Russia?” Zelenskyy requested.
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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 protection of the conflict in Ukraine: https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
Source: www.bostonherald.com”