At least 30 people have been killed in what Ukraine says is Russia’s biggest missile bombardment of the war so far.
More than 160 people were injured as Russia hit Kyiv, Odesa, Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv and Lviv in the early hours of Friday morning.
Russia “used nearly every type of weapon in its arsenal”, with homes and a maternity hospital hit, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said.
Ukraine’s air force said it had never seen so many missiles launched at once.
Kyiv’s air defences have drastically improved in recent months, but on Friday they were overwhelmed.
An Air Force spokesperson said Russia used hypersonic, cruise and ballistic missiles, including X-22 type, which are difficult to intercept. “We’ve never seen so many targets hit simultaneously,” he added.
The air force said 114 of 158 missiles and drones had been shot down.
Black smoke billowed from the different blast sites. We headed to one which was a 200-metre-long warehouse in Kyiv’s Podilskyy district, owned by a construction company. It had been completely hollowed out from the impact.
It’s a level of devastation only caused by a direct missile strike. For months, mostly falling debris caused the damage and loss of life that Ukrainians constantly fear. A bigger threat has now returned.
A few kilometres away, glass on one whole side of a skyscraper had been blown off from the force of another impact. Smoke had started to darken the sky. It was a drive through Kyiv which we hadn’t made since the early days of the full-scale invasion.
Nine people were killed in Kyiv. A metro station that was acting as an air raid shelter was also struck.
Once again, it wasn’t just Kyiv picking up the pieces either. Authorities claimed more than 10 Iranian-made Shahed drones and 15 missiles targeted the western city of Lviv, somewhere which has often been spared the worst of this invasion.
A city of Konotop in Sumy Region, close to the country’s northern border, was also hit by a missile. Officials in Odesa say a high-rise building caught fire after being struck by a drone. Four people were killed and 22 were injured, including two children aged six and eight.
