KYIV, Ukraine — Explosions rocked towns and cities around Ukraine on Thursday morning, and electricity went out in several regions as Russia launched what appeared to be one of its largest attacks to date, with cruise missiles and drones aimed at the country’s energy grid.
Air-raid sirens sounded about 5:30 a.m. throughout most of Ukraine. The Ukrainian military’s southern command said two Russian ships in the Black Sea had shown signs suggesting that they were preparing to launch missiles, triggering the alarms.
Russia launched more than 120 missiles in the volley, Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky, said in a post on Twitter, without elaborating. The aim, he said, was to “destroy critical infrastructure and kill civilians en masse.”
As the sun rose Thursday morning, the attack was underway. In the sky over Kyiv, a puffy contrail could be seen looping across the partially cloudy sky — possibly coming from a missile, a Ukrainian jet scrambled in defense or an air-defense weapon.
Seven or eight explosions followed in the capital. One rattled windows and set off car alarms in the city center. It was not immediately known what had been hit.
It was also not clear whether the blasts echoing in the city were from intercepts or strikes by cruise missiles.
The Kyiv city government said in a post on Telegram that a house and a car had been damaged from falling debris from a Russian missile shot down over the capital. It was not known whether anybody had been wounded, the post said.
“Antiaircraft defenses are working,” the city said in another statement posted online. “Keep calm! Stay in shelters!”
The authorities in Kharkiv, in the northeast, and in Odesa, in the south, reported damage from the volley.
Ukraine was under a combined attack from a swarm of drones and a volley of cruise missiles, the Ukrainian Air Force said on Facebook. The Iranian-made exploding drones, which Russia began acquiring last summer, were launched in a first wave, apparently to bog down air defenses ahead of the cruise missile strikes, it said.
The Ukrainian general staff headquarters said in a statement that Russia had launched 13 Iranian-made Shahed-136 drones at energy infrastructure in Kharkiv, a city in eastern Ukraine. The small delta-winged craft are powered by a piston engine with a distinctive buzz that sounds like a chain saw. They are slow flying and relatively easy to shoot down.
The statement from the general staff headquarters said air-defense systems had shot down 11 of the 13 drones aimed at Kharkiv. In the airspace around the city of Dnipro in southeastern Ukraine, air-defense forces shot down five more drones, according to a statement from the eastern military command.
The cruise missiles followed. The Russian military launched them toward Ukraine from several directions, firing from airplanes and ships at sea, the air force statement said.
The Ukrainian military’s northern command said it had shot down one Russian cruise missile in Sumy Province, in northeastern Ukraine.
For three months, Russia has launched waves of cruise missiles and drones at Ukraine’s energy infrastructure in what military analysts say is a strategy to plunge the country into cold and darkness and to demoralize the population. The volleys have come about every week or two.
Mr. Zelensky of Ukraine warned on Friday that another barrage was expected during the holidays. “With the approaching holiday season, Russian terrorists may become active again,” he said in a nightly address to Ukrainians. “They despise Christian values and any values in general.”
Denys Shmyhal, the prime minister, had said that “it is important for the Russians that Christmas and New Year’s Eve pass in darkness in Ukraine.”
Oleksandr Chubko contributed reporting.
