At least eight people were killed in Ukraine overnight as Russia said it conducted airstrikes on targets across the country.
One person was killed in an airstrike on Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, while other fatalities were reported as far west as Lviv.
Explosions were reported over Kyiv in the early hours of Thursday after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned that Russia might conduct a “massive attack.”
Zelensky later wrote that Russia had fired 70 rockets and 280 drones in the attack.
Both Reuters and AFP cited people on the ground as saying they had heard explosions.
“Sadly, one death has been confirmed,” the Kyiv city military administration wrote on Telegram in the early hours of Thursday.
Russia struck Kyiv with ballistic missiles, the city’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, said, urging people to seek shelter. He added that several nonresidential sites in Kyiv caught fire.
“The enemy is attacking the capital with ballistic weapons. The threat of further attack remains present. Stay in shelters!” Klitschko said.
Russia also attacked other Ukrainian cities overnight. At least six people, including two girls, were killed in a Russian missile strike on the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih, according to the head of the local military administration.
“In a village on the outskirts of Kryvyi Rih, a direct strike by an Iskander-M ballistic missile, launched from Voronezh, hit a private house where a large family lived, killing girls aged five and 12 and four adults,” Oleksandr Vilkul said.
He added that eight more people were wounded and that the death toll could rise..
Russian missiles also damaged two apartment buildings and injured six people in Lviv, a city in western Ukraine near the Polish border, according to local officials.
Meanwhile, the Polish Armed Forces announced on X that Poland had scrambled its fighter jets on Thursday to protect its airspace amid Russian airstrikes on Ukraine.
“Fighter aircraft and an early warning aircraft have begun operations while ground-based air defense systems and radar reconnaissance systems have reached a state of readiness,” the post said, adding that the actions are preventive in nature.
The strikes came after Zelensky warned of a “high probability that the strike will be carried out tonight.”
“I received a report from Air Force Commander Anatolii Kryvonozhko. The Russians prepared a massive attack several days ago,” Zelensky said on X.
The Ukrainian president stressed that Ukrainians’ safety depended on the willingness of Kyiv’s allies to provide anti-missile defenses. His statements came on the heels of a trip to the US, where he said President Donald Trump had agreed to give Ukraine licenses related to Patriot missile production.
Zelensky said Thursday: “It is important that our partners fully understand what’s happening, and that the protection of lives directly depends on their readiness, or lack thereof, to help us with air defense missiles.”
For its part, Ukraine continued its attacks on logistics centers inside Russia on Thursday.
In Penza, a warehouse belonging to online retailer Wildberries, often referred to as Russia’s Amazon, caught fire after being struck by a Ukrainian drone, injuring one person and triggering the evacuation of 200 others.
Ukraine says Wildberries is providing logistical support for Russia’s military.
Its attacks inside Russia also target the country’s already anemic domestic economy and drive home to ordinary Russians the message that the war is not simply something that affects Ukrainians.
The strikes are being carried out in the hope of putting Russian President Vladimir Putin under pressure to end his more than four-year war of aggression.
