Russian forces launched at least 60 missile strikes across Ukraine in one of the worst attacks since the war began.
Incredibly a Kyiv soldier managed to shoot down a cruise missile with just his machine gun but at least two people were killed in the onslaught.
Kyiv officials said Ukraine’s capital had withstood “one of the biggest rocket attacks” launched by Russian forces since they invaded almost ten months ago.
It is believed Moscow’s commanders want to smash Ukraine’s infrastructure as much as possible before Ukraine receives a new battery of Patriot defence rockets from the US.
Thudding blasts and gunfire from air-defence systems echoed across Ukraine as Moscow targeted Kyiv, southern Kryvyi Rih, south-eastern Zaporizhzhia and north-eastern Kharkiv earlier today.
Air raid alarms sounded across the country, warning of a new barrage of the Russian strikes that have occurred intermittently since mid-October.
More waves of Iranian made Shahed-136 kamikaze drones were expected as night fell and air defence teams braced to try and shoot down missiles.
Many of the projectiles fired were cruise missiles but Russian attackers also fired S-300 missiles originally intended for ground-to-air defences.
At the site of one attempted strike in Kyiv, military commanders said the city’s territorial defence mobile group had amazingly shot down a cruise missile with a machine gun.
A commander called “Hera” said: “Almost impossible to hit a missile with a machine gun, but it was done.”
Another commander, a military post chief named “Yevhen”, said the machine gunner who intercepted the missile “reacted quickly” and fired, and green sparks flew from the rocket as it began to spin and tumble to the ground.
In Kryvyi Rih in central Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky ’s hometown,
A Russian missile slammed into a residential building and destroyed its entrance.
Two people were killed, and at least five others were injured - including two children - and rushed to hospitals, said regional governor Valentyn Reznichenko.
Zaporizhzhia was also struck by about 15 Russian missiles, regional governor Oleksandr Starukh said.
And attacks left the city of Kharkiv without electricity.
Russia yesterday warned the West by readying a monster Yars strategic missile for combat - as a prominent pro-Putin MP and military expert called for a direct attack on London.
New footage shows the emplacement in an underground shaft at the Kozelsky compound, 160 miles southwest of Moscow.
A day earlier another nuclear-capable lethal Yars missile was loaded into its silo at the site.
Vladimir Putin was seen in late October overseeing the launch of a similar Yars nuclear missile on a mock attack on Britain and the US amid high tension in the war with Ukraine.
The latest video was released by Russia ’s defence ministry as a leading pro-Putin MP and military expert openly threatened London - the “hotbed of all nastiness” - with a missile attack.
