Russia launches massive drone and missile barrage across Ukraine, killing three

Russia unleashed a massive drone and missile barrage throughout Ukraine on Monday, and at least three people were reported killed in the attack that appeared to target energy infrastructure.

The barrage began around midnight and continued after daybreak in what appeared to be Russia's biggest attack against Ukraine in weeks. According to Ukraine's air force, there were multiple groups of Russian drones moving towards eastern, northern, southern, and central regions of Ukraine, followed by multiple cruise and ballistic missiles.

Explosions were heard in the capital, Kyiv. Power and water supplies in the city have been disrupted by the attack, Kyiv Mayor Vitalii Klitschko said. Ihor Polishchuk, mayor of Ukraine's western city of Lutsk, said a multi-story residential building and an unspecified infrastructure object were hit and one person was killed. Another person was killed in the central Dnipropetrovsk region, where the attack sparked multiple fires, regional head Serhii Lysak said. One person was also killed in the southeastern, partially occupied region of Zaporizhzhia, regional head Ivan Fedorov said.

Ukraine's private energy company DTEK introduced emergency blackouts, saying in an online statement that “energy workers throughout the country work 24/7 to restore light in the homes of Ukrainians.” In neighboring Poland, the military said Polish and NATO air defenses were activated in the eastern part of the country as a result of the attack.

A British safety adviser working with a team of journalists was killed after a Russian missile struck a hotel in the Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk, Reuters news agency confirmed.

Ryan Evans, 38, was staying at the Hotel Sapphire with colleagues in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region when it was hit by a Russian missile Saturday night. Two other members of the six-person Reuters crew were hospitalized with injuries. Local officials said the hotel was struck by an Iskander-M Russian ballistic missile, leaving the reporters with blast injuries, concussions and cuts on the body.

Associated Press reporters at the scene described the hotel as “rubble,” with excavators being used to clear debris hours after the attack. Besides the hotel, a nearby multistory building was also destroyed, said Donetsk regional Gov. Vadym Filashkin. Ukraine's eastern Kharkiv region also came under Russian fire, resulting in multiple civilian injuries, regional Gov. Oleh Syniehubov wrote on the Telegram messaging app Sunday.

In Kharkiv's Chuhuiv region, five people were injured, including a 4-year-old boy and a 14-year-old girl, after two houses were hit by a Russian strike. In Kharkiv city, eight people were wounded when a two-story house was set on fire by a Russian attack. In Russia, five people died in Ukrainian shelling in of the border region of Belgorod, officials said Sunday.

Twelve other people were wounded in the Russian village of Rakitone, 38 kilometres from the Ukrainian border, including a 16-year-old girl reported to be in critical condition, said regional Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov on Sunday. Another man also died in a separate drone attack on the border village of Solovevka, he wrote later on social media.