Rus­sia on Sun­day launched a mas­sive drone and mis­sile at­tack on Ukraine, de­scribed by of­fi­cials as the largest over the past months, tar­get­ing en­er­gy in­fra­struc­ture and killing civil­ians.

The at­tack came as fears are mount­ing about Moscow’s in­ten­tions to dev­as­tate Ukraine’s pow­er gen­er­a­tion ca­pac­i­ty ahead of the cold win­ter.

Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Ze­len­skyy said that Rus­sia had launched a to­tal of 120 mis­siles and 90 drones in a large-scale at­tack across Ukraine. Var­i­ous types of drones were de­ployed, he said, in­clud­ing Iran­ian-made Sha­heds as well as cruise, bal­lis­tic and air­craft-launched bal­lis­tic mis­siles.

Ukrain­ian de­fences shot down 140 air tar­gets, Ze­len­skyy said in a state­ment on the Telegram mes­sag­ing app.

“The en­e­my’s tar­get was our en­er­gy in­fra­struc­ture through­out Ukraine. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, there is dam­age to ob­jects from hits and falling de­bris. In Myko­laiv, as a re­sult of a drone at­tack, two peo­ple were killed and six oth­ers were in­jured, in­clud­ing two chil­dren,” Ze­len­skyy said.

Two oth­ers were killed in the Ode­sa re­gion, where the at­tack dam­aged en­er­gy in­fra­struc­ture and dis­rupt­ed pow­er and wa­ter sup­plies, said lo­cal Gov. Oleh Kiper.

The com­bined drone and mis­sile at­tack was the most pow­er­ful in three months, ac­cord­ing to the head of Kyiv’s City Mil­i­tary Ad­min­is­tra­tion Ser­hii Pop­ko.

Russ­ian strikes have ham­mered Ukraine’s pow­er in­fra­struc­ture since Moscow’s all-out in­va­sion of its neigh­bour in Feb­ru­ary 2022, prompt­ing re­peat­ed emer­gency pow­er shut­downs and na­tion­wide rolling black­outs. Ukrain­ian of­fi­cials have rou­tine­ly urged West­ern al­lies to bol­ster the coun­try’s air de­fences to counter as­saults and al­low for re­pairs.

Ex­plo­sions were heard across Ukraine on Sun­day, in­clud­ing in cap­i­tal Kyiv, the key south­ern port of Ode­sa, as well as the coun­try’s west and cen­tral re­gions, ac­cord­ing to lo­cal re­ports.

The op­er­a­tional com­mand of Poland’s armed forces wrote on X that Pol­ish and al­lied air­craft, in­clud­ing fight­er jets, have been mo­bi­lized in Pol­ish air­space be­cause of the “mas­sive” Russ­ian at­tack on neigh­bour­ing Ukraine. The steps were aimed to pro­vide safe­ty in Poland’s bor­der ar­eas, it said.

One per­son was in­jured af­ter the roof of a five-sto­ry res­i­den­tial build­ing caught fire in Kyiv’s his­toric cen­tre, ac­cord­ing to Pop­ko.

A ther­mal pow­er plant op­er­at­ed by pri­vate en­er­gy com­pa­ny DTEK was “se­ri­ous­ly dam­aged,” the com­pa­ny said.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) —