Ukrainian authorities have reported waves of Russian airstrikes across the country, including attacks in Kyiv, as emergency blackouts were announced.
The barrage of strikes came as air raids alerts were issued across Ukraine.
They followed what have been days of euphoria in Ukraine after one of its biggest military successes so far of the nearly nine-month Russian invasion — the retaking last week of the southern city of Kherson.
Among regions where officials reported strikes were Lviv, in the west, and Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city in the north east.
A senior Ukrainian official, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, described the situation as “critical” and urged Ukrainians to cut back on their power usage and “hang in there”.
Power provider DTEK announced emergency blackouts in the capital and authorities announced similar steps elsewhere, too.
Kyiv’s mayor said strikes on Ukraine’s capital hit three residential buildings and that air defence units shot down other missiles.
Vitali Klitschko said on his Telegram social media channel that medics and rescuers are being scrambled to the sites of the attacks.
Video published by a presidential aide showed a five-story, apparently residential building on fire in Kyiv.
The strikes followed air raid sirens in the capital and break what had been a period of comparative calm since previous waves of drone and missile attacks several weeks ago.
Reports of abuses are also emerging in newly liberated Kherson areas now that Russian troops have gone.
Speaking from Kyiv, the head of the UN human rights office’s monitoring mission in Ukraine, Matilda Bogner said her teams are looking to travel to Kherson to try to verify allegations of nearly 80 cases of enforced disappearances and arbitrary detention it has turned up in the area and “understand whether the scale is in fact larger than what we have documented already”.
The head of the National Police of Ukraine, Igor Klymenko, said authorities are to start investigating reports from Kherson residents that Russian forces set up at least three alleged torture sites in now-liberated parts of the wider Kherson region and that “our people may have been detained and tortured there.”
“Mine clearance is currently under way. After that, I think, today, investigative actions will begin,” he said on Ukrainian TV.
