Russian forces unleashed a barrage of missile and drone strikes against targets in eastern and southern Ukraine early Friday, as a Moscow offensive that has been brewing for days appeared to pick up pace ahead of the one-year anniversary of its invasion. The Kremlin's forces focused their bombardments on Ukraine’s industrial east, especially the Luhansk and Donetsk provinces, the Ukrainian military said. Moscow-backed separatists have been fighting Ukrainian forces there since 2014. The barrage struck critical infrastructure in Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city in the northeast, and hit energy infrastructure in Zaporizhzhia in the southeast, the AP reports. Air raid sirens went off across much of the country.
Zaporizhzhia City Council Secretary Anatolii Kurtiev said the city had been hit 17 times in one hour, which he said made it the most intense period of attacks since the beginning of the full-scale invasion on Feb. 24, 2022. The bombardments could be an effort by Russia to soften up Ukraine's defenses ahead of a ground assault, which Kyiv believes Moscow is planning. The onslaught lent a sense of urgency to Ukraine’s pleas for more Western military support. The need prompted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to make a rare—and daring—two-day trip abroad this week to press allies to grant Kyiv more aid. Due to the threat of a missile attack, emergency power outages were enacted in Kyiv city and the Kyiv and Dnipropetrovsk regions, according to private energy operator DTEK.
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