The Russian army hit the Ukrainian capital Kiev with ballistic missiles on Monday, injuring four people and damaging an uninhabited three-storey building, according to officials.
Kiev mayor Vitali Klitschko said two of the four injured were in a central neighbourhood and taken to hospital. Rocket debris also fell in two other neighbourhoods.
According to the Ukrainian air force, two ballistic missiles were fired at the city of millions from the Russian-controlled Crimea peninsula. Both were shot down.
Half a dozen explosions from anti-aircraft missiles had previously been heard in the city centre. The air raid warning was only triggered a few seconds beforehand, it said.
Ukraine has been fending off a full-scale Russian invasion for over two years. Since then, the Ukrainian air defence system has been massively reinforced with Western systems.
The Defence Ministry in Kiev said Monday that the country's air defence has shot down 2,000 Russian cruise missiles or rockets since Moscow launched its all-out attack on February 24, 2022.
"That's a result of the titanic work of Ukrainian air defenders. Thousands of lives were saved by modern air defense systems provided by our partners," the ministry wrote in a post published on X, formerly Twitter.
However, the ministry did not specify how many rockets and cruise missiles managed to get past Ukraine's air defence system. It also didn't list the number of intercepted combat drones, which have played a major role in the war.
The ministry echoed President Volodymyr Zelensky's repeated request for additional air defence systems from Ukraine's Western allies in order to better protect the Ukrainian population.
"Ukraine still needs more air defense systems to protect our people from Russian terror. Because civilian infrastructure remains the primary target of Russian strikes."
Russian aerial drones struck the Ukrainian electricity grid in the Odessa and Mykolaiv regions in the south of the country in the early hours of Monday, the Ukrainian military reported.
Power cuts occurred in parts of Odessa and its hinterland. The city authorities said they were forced to halt tram and trolleybus services. No injuries were reported.
A substation in the Mykolaiv region caught fire after taking a hit, the state-owned Ukrenergo energy supply company reported.
The military authorities reported that debris from a drone hit a two-storey residential building in the region, setting it alight and injuring 11 people, two of them seriously.
Russian forces have increasingly targeted Ukrainian energy infrastructure over recent days. Kharkiv in the north-east has been badly hit. Repairing the grid would take around a week, Ukrenergo head Volodymyr Kudrytskyi told national television.
On the Russian side, a fire broke out in the power station supplying electricity and district heating in Novocherkassk in the south-west of the country early on Monday. The plant is the largest of its kind in the Rostov region.
The regional authorities reported that the fire at the plant had been doused and its cause was being investigated. Two blocks and two transmission lines were shut down, they said. Unofficial reports attributed the damage to a Ukrainian drone attack.
Russia has repeatedly targeted Ukrainian power infrastructure during winter since it invaded the country in February 2022.
