Russia on Friday said it is “in a state of war” amid an enormous wave of missile and drone attacks on Ukraine’s territory.
Russia launched nearly 90 missiles and more than 60 Iranian-made kamikaze drones, causing damage to energy facilities, in what Ukraine has stated was an attempt to harm the country’s electricity and heating network.
Moscow said the strikes were a response to a series of attacks Ukraine staged on its border regions in the last few weeks.
At least five people were killed and more than 20 wounded, Ukraine’s interior ministry and local officials said.
Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said “We are in a state of war” in an interview with a pro-Kremlin newspaper published on Friday.
The remark two years into the Ukraine war rises above past Kremlin descriptions of the war as a “special military operation.”
“Yes, it started as a special military operation, but as soon as this bunch was formed there, the collective West became a participant on Ukraine’s side, for us it already became a war,” Peskov said.
“De jure (legally) it is a special military operation. But de facto it has turned into a war,” he stated.
Moscow has said the West is directly participating in the conflict by supplying Ukraine with weapons.
Russia’s defense ministry said on Friday it was targeting Ukraine’s “energy sites, military-industrial complex, railway hubs and arsenals.”
Ukraine’s state-run power grid said, “Dozens of power system facilities have been damaged.”
Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president,” said on Friday that political “indecision” was costing Ukrainian lives while a $60 million aid package is stalled in the US Congress.
Ukraine’s air force said it shot down 37 of 88 missiles launched overnight and 55 of 63 drones.
The strikes caused about 700,000 people to be left without electricity in the northeastern Kharkiv region, governor Oleg Synegubov said.
Russian aerial attacks on Ukraine’s power grid last winter caused millions to lose power and left them without heating in sub-zero temperatures but the energy network has mostly held up this year.
German Galushchenko, Ukraine’s energy minister, said Romania, Slovakia, and Poland were providing emergency electricity.
Officials said a Russian missile struck a trolleybus at the Dnipro hydroelectric station.
Three people were killed in Zaporizhzhia, according to Governor Ivan Fedorov.
The commander of Ukraine’s ground forces, Oleksandr Pavliuk, said on Friday that Russia could be preparing to begin a summer offensive and was putting together a group of more than 100,000 troops.
A woman was killed and others wounded in a strike on Friday in Russia’s Belgorod along the border with Ukraine where Kyiv has increased attacks.
Moscow’s FSB security service said it had arrested seven pro-Ukraine partisans in Russia’s capital, the latest of many similar cases.
