‘Putin is vindictive’: Russia bombs Ukraine as Kyiv presses on with Kursk offensive | Russia-Ukraine war news

Kyiv, Ukraine – The Russian air attack on Ukraine has been massive.

In waves from several directions and at different speeds and altitudes, 127 missiles and 109 drones attacked 15 of Ukraine’s 24 regions.

The offensive in Ukraine is seen as retaliation by Russian President Vladimir Putin for Kyiv’s bold incursion into the Kursk region of western Russia that began in early August and has apparently captured more than 1,000 square kilometers (386 square miles).

“He is a vindictive person, he felt insulted,” Lieutenant General Igor Romanenko, former deputy chief of the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, told Al Jazeera.

The attack began in the pre-dawn darkness of Monday when swarms of heavy drones laden with explosives took off from the city of Yeysk on the Sea of ​​Azov in southwestern Russia.

Then Kinzhal (Dagger) ballistic missiles were launched from under the wings of MiG-31 fighter jets stationed in the western Russian city of Lipetsk.

Kinzhal’s rockets are highly maneuverable in flight and can reach an astonishing speed of 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) per second – half the speed a rocket needs to reach outer space.

Tu-95 heavy bombers in the Volgograd region fired Kh-101 missiles, the type that hit Ukraine’s largest children’s hospital in July.

Despite its subsonic speed, the Kh-101 missiles are difficult to intercept, as they can only fly 50 metres (164 feet) above the ground and zigzag their way to their targets.

Iskander ballistic missiles were launched from the western Voronezh region and annexed Crimea.

“This attack was bigger than usual.”

Air raid sirens woke Anatoly Dmitruk, a railway maintenance worker, despite the wax plugs he wears in his ears every night.

But he went to sleep “several times” before air defense systems filled the air with the deafening sounds of shooting down missiles and drones.

“I realized that this attack was bigger than usual,” Dmitruk told Al Jazeera.

He checked the Radar Ukraine Telegram channel to see the scope of the attack — and got out of bed to sit in the corridor, following the “stay between two walls” rule he learned when the full-scale Russian invasion began in 2022.

That was when his wife and 17-year-old son Arseniy left Ukraine — first for the former Soviet republic of Moldova and then for the western German city of Dusseldorf.

The explosions stopped before 8 a.m. The air raid alert remained in effect for another three hours.

For Demetrius, the unprecedented length of time the alert took had a positive side.

The burly 39-year-old lives in a two-bedroom apartment in eastern Kyiv, and his only way to work is the subway, which runs on a 700-metre (2,297-foot) metro bridge over the Dnipro River and stops working during alarms.

“So, I went back to sleep and then had a nice morning at home,” Dmitruk said.

When asked if he was afraid, he replied indifferently: “No, no…

A Ukrainian psychologist says feelings of anxiety have diminished after hundreds of airstrike alerts in Kyiv since 2022.

“Anxiety before new shelling is a routine emotional background for millions of Ukrainians,” Svetlana Chonikina, deputy head of the Association of Political Psychologists, a group in Kyiv, told Al Jazeera.

On the other hand, they have adapted to the threats and made their security practices routine by hiding in a shelter, between two walls or in a subway station, she said.

But on the other hand, stress builds up and becomes chronic, and its devastating consequences can appear years later, she said.

However, Zakharova said Moscow’s air strikes had failed to achieve their main goal of “reaching the threshold” of the patience of the Ukrainian public and politicians.

“This will not happen, and this is the main effect of the massive missile attacks on Ukrainian cities,” she concluded.

“The biggest attack on Russia”

Ukrainian Air Force Commander Mykola Oleshchuk said that Ukrainian air defense forces shot down 102 out of 127 missiles and 99 out of 109 drones.

“It was the largest attack ever launched by Russia,” he said.

However, the rest of the missiles and drones reached 15 of Ukraine’s 24 regions, killing seven people, wounding 47 others and damaging buildings, emergency officials at power plants and transport said.

Russia has repeatedly denied targeting civilians, saying its “high-precision strikes” have hit Ukraine’s energy infrastructure that “supports the military-industrial complex.”

The attack hit the 288-metre (945-foot) dam, part of the Kyiv hydroelectric power station a few kilometres from the capital.

But Timofey Mylovanov, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, said the damage was minor and the dam was “intact.”

“If the dam collapsed, a large part of Kiev would have been flooded,” he added.

The dam was completed in 1968, putting an end to the annual spring floods that reached parts of Kiev, especially on its lower left bank.

The dam was renovated in 2011, but many left-bank residents are concerned.

“If the dam is destroyed, the resulting flood will sweep away our house in five minutes,” Tetiana Kravchenko, who lives in a two-storey house she and her husband completed in 2019, told Al Jazeera.

The house is located just 100 metres (328 feet) from a sandy beach on the Dnipro River – a luxury that turned into a disadvantage during the war, she said.

“We thought there would be peace and quiet, but instead, we feel like we are living next to an abyss,” said the 52-year-old cafe owner.

Within hours of the attack, power outages began across Kyiv after weeks of relatively stable power supplies.

Although the direct damage from the attack may not be significant, the indirect losses are much higher, according to a Kiev-based analyst.

“These factors are increased migration, factory closures, a general negative background, etc.,” Alexei Kosh told Al Jazeera.

“The indirect losses are enormous, they are much greater than the direct losses.”

Meanwhile, Ukraine is responding to Russian air strikes in almost the same way.

Dozens of Ukrainian drones have been shot down over western Russia this week alone, including eight flying toward Moscow, according to news reports.

A heavy drone was shot down on Wednesday near the Olenya military air base, which hosts Tu-22M3 heavy bombers in Russia’s Murmansk region, about 1,800 kilometers (1,118 miles) from the Ukrainian border.

Despite the failure of the attack, its distance makes about 2.6 million square kilometers (10 million square miles) of western Russia — an area the size of Argentina — vulnerable to heavy Ukrainian drones, according to calculations by the online magazine Firstka.