(LONDON) — Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched 14 missiles and 161 drones into the country in a massive overnight bombardment, as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned against Russian deception in revived peace talks.
Ukraine’s air force said it shot down 80 of the drones launched in the latest Russian barrage, with another 78 lost in flight without causing any damage. The 14 missiles targeted energy infrastructure, the air force said, adding it would not reveal how many were intercepted.
Ukrainian Energy Minister German Galushchenko wrote on Facebook that Russia conducted a “massive” missile and drone attack on “gas infrastructure.”
The aim of the “criminal attacks” was to “stop the production of gas, which is necessary to provide citizens’ household needs and centralized heating,” he said.
“While Russia continues to blatantly lie about not attacking civilian critical infrastructure, we are witnessing multiple missiles targeting Ukrainian gas mining facilities at once,” Galushchenko wrote.
“Such actions of the enemy prove only once again that Russia is trying to hurt ordinary Ukrainians, plunged into the cold in the middle of winter,” he added. “This is outright terrorism.”
Russia’s Defense Ministry, meanwhile, said its strike targeted “gas and energy infrastructure facilities that ensure the operation of the military-industrial complex of Ukraine.”
“The strike’s objective has been achieved,” the ministry said. “All facilities have been hit.”
Russia’s long-range strikes into Ukraine have not eased despite the opening of talks with President Donald Trump’s administration aimed at ending Moscow’s three-year-old full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The talks began this week in Saudi Arabia without Ukrainian participation, Kyiv’s exclusion prompting condemnation in Ukraine and across Europe.
Such criticism appeared to irk Trump, who this week criticized European allies and the Ukrainian leadership for having failed to end Russia’s war. The president went on to call Zelenskyy a “dictator without elections,” claiming — without providing evidence — that his Ukrainian counterpart’s public approval rating was as low as 4%.
Trump also wrote on Truth Social that Zelenskyy “better move fast or he is not going to have a country left.”
Zelenskyy, meanwhile, suggested Trump is in a “disinformation space,” attributing at least some of the U.S. leader’s criticism to Russian disinformation campaigns.
On Thursday, Zelenskyy marked the anniversary of the culmination of Ukraine’s 2014 Maidan Revolution — in which pro-Western protesters overthrew Moscow-aligned President Viktor Yanukovych.
“It was in these days of 2014 that Russia chose war — it began the first steps towards the occupation of Crimea,” Zelenskyy wrote on Telegram. “While people were being killed in Kyiv, and people were defending their freedom, Putin decided to strike another blow.”
“Since then, the world has been living in a new reality, when Russia is trying to deceive everyone,” the president wrote. “And it is very important not to give in, to be together. It is very important to support those who defend freedom.”
Ukraine is continuing its own long-range campaign against Russian military and industrial infrastructure, especially targets linked to the country’s lucrative fossil fuel industry. Ukrainian security services have referred to the campaign as “drone sanctions.”
Russia’s Defense Ministry said on Thursday that its forces shot down 13 Ukrainian drones over the previous 24 hours.
ABC News’ Nataliia Popova, Oleksiy Pshemyskiy and Fidel Pavlenko contributed to this report.
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