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By Max Hunder and Jonathan Landay
KYIV (Reuters)—Russia launched its most widespread air strikes since the start of the Ukraine war on Monday, raining cruise missiles on busy cities during rush hour and knocking out power and heat, in what President Vladimir Putin called revenge for a blown-up bridge.
Missiles tore into busy intersections, parks, and tourist sites in the center of the capital Kyiv.
Explosions were reported in Lviv, Ternopil, and Zhytomyr in western Ukraine, Dnipro and Kremenchuk in central Ukraine, Zaporizhzhia in the south, and Kharkiv in the east. Ukrainian officials said at least 10 people were killed and scores injured, and swathes of the country left without power.
Thousands of residents raced to bomb shelters as air raid sirens rang out throughout the day. The barrage of dozens of cruise missiles fired from air, land, and sea was the biggest wave of air strikes to hit locations away from the front line, at least since the initial volleys on the war’s first day, Feb. 24.
«The Kyiv regime, with its actions, has put itself on the same level as international terrorist organizations. With the most odious groups. To leave such acts without a response is simply impossible,» Putin said in a televised address.
The Russian leader said he had ordered «massive» long-range strikes and he threatened more strikes in the future if Ukraine hits Russian territory.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said the attacks were deliberately timed to kill people, as well as to knock out Ukraine’s power grid. His prime minister said 11 major infrastructure targets were hit in eight regions, leaving swaths of the country with no electricity, water or heat.
«They are trying to destroy us and wipe us off the face of the earth,» Zelensky said.
The body of a man in jeans lay in a street at a major Kyiv intersection, surrounded by flaming cars. In a park, a soldier cut through the clothes of a woman who lay in the grass to try to treat her wounds. Two other women were bleeding nearby.
‘THEY ARE TRYING TO DESTROY US’
The Kremlin was humiliated two days ago when a blast damaged Europe’s longest bridge, which it had built after it seized and annexed Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula in 2014.
