Ukrainian officials also said the strikes cut the last remaining power line outside the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, located in Russian-occupied territory, forcing the plant, Europe’s largest, to rely on generator power. The outage, which was fixed in the early afternoon, came a day after a visit to Kyiv by UN Secretary General António Guterres, who reiterated his calls for the creation of an internationally brokered “demilitarized zone” around the plant. of electricity.
Speaking in Kyiv on Wednesday, where he met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Guterres said: “The position of the United Nations, which I have always expressed, is very clear: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a violation of the UN Charter and international law .”
Thursday’s overnight and early morning barrage — which included 81 missiles of various types as well as Iranian-made drones — sent a clear message from Moscow that Russia is not afraid of international pressure to abandon his war goals, which include illegal annexation. in at least four regions of southeastern Ukraine.
Thursday’s airstrikes marked the first time in weeks that Russia sent an array of high-powered missiles raining down on Ukraine, following a brief pause in its relentless bombing campaign against civilian infrastructure in Ukraine that began in October and continued until almost mid-February.
The regular attacks that began late last year are part of a concerted drive by Russia to cut off electricity and heat to Ukrainian citizens during the coldest months. Russian officials insist the strikes are intended to slow Ukraine down on the battlefield. Bombing civilian targets of no military value is a potential war crime.
Ukrainian officials say the airstrikes are designed to weaken Ukrainian resolve, and on March 1 – the official first day of spring – the country celebrates a new season and that it has survived Russian bombing.
Then Russia launched another round.
“What’s special about last night’s attack is that they fired six Kinzhal missiles at once,” Ukrainian air force spokesman Yuriy Ihnat said by phone. The entire barrage was launched from different points, he said – from the Kursk region of Russia, as well as from the Caspian, Azov and Black Seas.
The Kinzhal hypersonic missiles used by Russia on Thursday were first fired over Ukraine in March and have been used several times since, with Ukrainian officials noting that their air defenses were powerless to stop them.
Russian President Vladimir Putin boasted in 2018 that the missiles travel at 10 times the speed of sound. In March, President Biden said the missiles were “virtually impossible to stop.”
In January, Ukrainian officials blamed one such missile for a deadly strike on a residential building in the city of Dnipro that killed at least 46 people and evacuated an entire section of a large apartment complex.
Russia has a limited supply of such missiles and has never sent so many to Ukraine in a single attack. Ukraine’s defense minister, Oleksii Reznikov, claimed in November that Russia used 16 Kinzhal missiles during the war and kept stocks of 42 missiles after replacing the ones it fired.
Ihnat said Ukraine’s air defense systems were able to intercept 48 of the 81 missiles fired on Thursday. Of this, the forces of Ukraine actually shot 34 missiles. “This is a good sign,” Ihnat said.
“Of course we want more, but this is a reduced number,” he said. “It was a very large mass attack, with a great concentration of energy and means, all at the same time.”
Ukrainian forces hope that advanced air defense systems, which Ukraine’s western allies promised in Kyiv and have begun arriving in the country, will be able to shoot down the Kinzhals, which follow a curved, ballistic trajectory. , which makes them difficult to prevent, Ihnat said.
The Patriot surface-to-air missile system, for example, is believed to destroy them. “But can the Patriots stop them?” Ihnat said. “It will only be shown in practice.”
Ukrainian officials have pleaded for their Western backers, including the United States, to share stronger air defense systems such as the Patriot, to help stop attacks that go unnoticed by their existing hardware.
In addition to the missile strikes, the head of the Ukrainian presidential administration, Andriy Yermak, reported on Telegram that Russian bombing killed three people in the southern city of Kherson. The Russian invaders had occupied Kherson for months, and since the withdrawal in November had mercilessly bombarded it from the east side of the Dnieper River.
With Ukraine’s nuclear energy operator, Energoatom, warning that backup generators can only keep electricity flowing to the giant power station for 10 days, the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, urged immediate action.
“Every time we roll a dice,” Grossi said in a statement Thursday. “And if we let this go on from time to time then one day our luck will run out.” On Thursday afternoon, Energoatom released a statement saying that electricity has been restored.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday that Putin had no plans to speak with Guterres, whose discussions with Zelensky focused on a potential extension of the Black Sea grain deal, which protects the export of Ukrainian grain, which is widely relied upon. developing countries.
On Wednesday, US National Intelligence Director Avril Haines told senators that Putin faces “a lot of constraints.”
Prolonging the war in Ukraine, he said, may be what he sees as his “best remaining path to finally secure Russia’s strategic interests in Ukraine.”
Meanwhile, fierce fighting continues in the embattled eastern city of Bakhmut, which has become a symbol of Ukrainian resistance as Ukraine refuses to cede control to large waves of Russian fighters, including many untrained fighters. mercenaries recruited from Russian prisons.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on Wednesday that Russia “has suffered many losses but at the same time we cannot rule out that Bakhmut may fall in the coming days.”
On the same day, Yevgeniy Prigozhin, the head of Wagner’s mercenary forces in Russia, posted a video claiming that his troops were in full control of the neighborhoods east of the Bakhmutka River, which runs through in the city of the eastern region of Donetsk.
Russian forces closed in on Ukrainian troops from three sides, leaving only one major road available for travel in and out of the city. That road is in range of Russian artillery, making travel dangerous.
Dixon reports from Riga, Latvia.