Russia launches 450 drones and dozens of missiles at Ukraine

Ukraine's air defenses and government said a massive Russian aerial assault overnight into Tuesday sent roughly 450 long‑range drones and dozens of missiles across the country, striking energy infrastructure and residential areas and compounding hardship during bitter winter cold. The barrage came a day before U.S.-brokered talks in Abu Dhabi intended to address the war.

The Ukrainian Air Force provided the most detailed operational account, saying Moscow fired 71 missiles and 450 drones and that "38 missiles and 412 drones were shot down or suppressed. Twenty-seven missiles and 31 drones impacted across 27 locations." President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the strikes targeted the power grid and named Sumy, Kharkiv, Kyiv, Dnipro, Odesa and Vinnytsia among the regions hit, adding that "at least nine people have so far been confirmed injured."

Local emergency services reported damage and fires in Kyiv, including harm to residential buildings, a kindergarten and a gas station. Kyiv's State Emergency Service said five people were wounded in the capital. Other officials put the overall wounded at 10; casualty counts remain preliminary and may change as assessments continue. Officials and photographs showed civilians sheltering in metro stations as crews worked to restore electricity and heat amid severe temperatures that plunged into the subzero range.

Ukraine's largest private energy company, DTEK, said the overnight attack damaged its thermal power plants, marking the ninth major assault on its facilities since October. Attacks on substations, transformers, turbines and generators are part of what Kyiv describes as a deliberate campaign to deny light, heating and running water to civilians during the coldest weeks of winter.

Foreign minister Andrii Sybiha said Moscow struck "with 450 drones and more than 60 missiles overnight," and Zelenskyy urged partners to apply "maximum pressure" on Russia. The Kremlin has stated it temporarily limited strikes on Kyiv earlier in the winter; a Kremlin official also said there had been a pause on strikes until Feb. 1 following a request from U.S. and Russian leaders, an assertion Kyiv officials and outside analysts say requires independent confirmation.

Kiev's military reported counterstrikes overnight. The Ukrainian General Staff said its forces struck a drone training and production site in occupied Zaporizhzhia, a concentration of Russian forces in the Belgorod region of Russia and an electronic warfare site in occupied Donetsk. Moscow's Defense Ministry said its forces downed at least 10 Ukrainian drones during the same period.

Beyond the immediate human toll, the attack carries clear market and policy implications. Repeated blows to generation and transmission capacity heighten the risk of prolonged outages, raise emergency procurement needs and will increase pressure on Ukraine's fiscal balances and energy budget as the state and private utilities mobilize repair crews and replacement equipment. Western suppliers of air defenses, power equipment and winter humanitarian aid are likely to see accelerated requests; Zelenskyy's appeal for "maximum pressure" frames an argument for faster weapons deliveries and tougher sanctions that could intensify geopolitical and trade frictions.

Discrepancies in munitions and casualty counts appear across Ukrainian statements and other official accounts; reporters and aid agencies will need to verify the scale of outages, the number of people left without heat, and the full human and infrastructure cost. The assault underlines how military operations that target critical civilian systems can reshape wartime economics and diplomacy even as negotiators prepare to meet.