Russia's military launched a large-scale missile attack on Ukraine's energy infrastructure, Ukrainian authorities said early Friday.
The attack "severely damaged" several Ukrainian power plants and knocked out electricity to thousands of people, the DTEK energy provider said.
"As Ukrainians wake to the coldest day of the winter so far, the enemy tries to break our spirit with this cynical terrorist attack," DTEK CEO Maxim Timchenko said.
Russia fired 94 missiles in the barrage, including cruise and ballistic missiles, and almost 200 drones, according to Ukraine's air force. It claimed to have shot down 81 of the missiles.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said the attack showed Moscow had no interest in peace and called for more Western air defense systems to protect Ukraine's skies and harsher sanctions on Moscow.
Ukraine's Energy Minister German Galushchenko said engineers were "taking all the necessary measures to minimize the impacts" after explosions were reported in a few regions.
An air raid alert was issued at 7:00 am, with social media channels that monitor threats reporting cruise and hypersonic Kinzhal missiles over several regions of Ukraine.
Neighboring Poland said it placed its army on "high readiness" due to the threat of an attack.
Russia has conducted at least 11 large-scale strikes on Ukraine's energy infrastructure since the beginning of the year, Kyiv says.
To manage the power deficit, Ukraine's energy operator has been implementing hours-long outages, and it announced increased restrictions on Friday.
Moscow has previously acknowledged striking Ukraine's energy sites but says they are legitimate targets as they "support the Ukrainian defense industry enterprises."
The latest strike comes a day after the Kremlin said it would "definitely" respond to a Ukrainian attack on a southern airfield using U.S.-supplied ATACMS missiles.
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