The speaker for the Air Force of Ukraine, Yury Ignat, said that air defense systems of the country could not shoot down any of Russia's hypersonic Kinzhal missiles in the most recent missile strike that the Russian forces conducted against Ukraine.
He also said that Ukraine faced such a massive missile strike for the first time.
"This is such an attack… To be honest, I don't remember such a thing,” Ignat said.
In the morning of March 9, explosions were reported in Kyiv and in a number of Ukrainian regions. The head of the Ministry of Energy of Ukraine German Galushchenko said that energy infrastructure facilities were damaged in several regions of the country.
The head of the Odessa region, Maxim Marchenko, reported a massive missile attack, in which an energy infrastructure facility was damaged.
The head of the Kharkiv region, Oleg Sinegubov, wrote on Telegram that critical infrastructure facilities were targeted in the attack.
Kyiv Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko reported explosions in Goloseevsky and Svyatoshinsky districts of the Ukrainian capital. In addition, he announced the start of emergency power outages.
The authorities of the Lviv region also reported the shelling. In the Zolochevsky district of the region, five people were killed, said the head of the region Maxim Kozitsky.
Kyiv, Kirovograd, Dnipro, Odessa, Kharkiv, Zaporozhye, Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk, Zhytomyr and Vinnitsa regions suffered as a result of the missile strike, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky later said.
Ukraine's energy company DTEK reported an attack on three thermal power plants.
According to the Russian Defence Ministry, Russia conducted its previous large-scale missile attack on February 10. The department then said that the Russian forces struck critical facilities of the energy system that ensure the functioning of enterprises of the military-industrial complex and the transport system.