KRAMATORSK, Ukraine -- At least three people were killed in overnight Russian strikes that targeted residential buildings in the eastern city of Kramatorsk.
The February 8 attacks included heavy “glide” bombs, officials said, weapons that Russia has used to devastate both Ukrainian frontline positions as well as residential areas.
Nearly 20 people were injured in the early morning attacks, the National Police said.
The Russian bombs blew out nearly all the windows on one of the apartment buildings, and left a debris field of glass, wood, burned-out cars, and tangled playground equipment in the courtyard below.
"There's my apartment, third floor. Nothing's left there -- no windows, no doors," one woman, who did not give her name, told RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service, as snow fell around her. "My family is safe -- my grandmother is 83 and my niece is disabled."
"The blast wave shattered all the windows. The doors between the rooms, the fridge. Everything is broken," said another man as he picked through his damaged kitchen.
In total, Russia fired more than 400 drones and missile at locations across the country, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said. In a post to Telegram, he complained that the Russian weapons continued to be equipped with imported foreign parts and components, as he announced new measures aimed at cutting off supplies of the parts.
Along with Slovyansk, Kramatorsk is one of two major cities that Ukraine still controls in the eastern Donetsk region. The two are considered “stronghold cities” that are essential to Ukraine’s defenses in the region.
Russia has made capturing the entire Donetsk region a strategic priority, a point it has hammered home repeatedly in ongoing peace negotiations brokered by the United States.
Throughout this winter, Russia has relentlessly targeted civilian residences across Ukraine, as well as the country’s power grid and heating facilities. Millions of people in the capital, Kyiv, and other cities have struggled with electricity or heating outages as unusually bitter cold has gripped the country for weeks.
State-run oil-and-gas company Naftogaz said that Russia targeted its facilities in the eastern Poltava region overnight.
"This attack was the 19th targeted Russian attack on the [Nafogaz] facilities since the beginning of the year," the company said.
Other locations across Ukraine were also hit by aerial attacks overnight on February 8, including the port cities of Kherson and Odesa.
The government ordered emergency nationwide power shutdowns on February 7, after earlier Russian strikes, which also hit electricity generation and distribution facilities.
For its part, Ukraine has also stepped up the tempo of its drone attacks targeting oil and gas facilities, and energy infrastructure inside of Russia.
The attacks have not caused widespread suffering for most Russians, although border regions like Belgorod have seen regular power outages.
Zelenskyy defended Ukraine's right to strike Russian energy targets, saying it helped deprive Moscow of export revenues.
"We do not have to choose, whether we strike a military target or energy. [Putin] sells this energy. He sells oil. So is it energy, or is it a military target? Honestly, it's the same thing," Zelenskiy said in a post to social media. "He sells oil, takes money, invests in weapons. He kills Ukrainians with these weapons."
"We either build weapons and strike their weapons. Or we strike the source where their money is generated and multiplied. And that source is their energy sector...All of this is a legitimate target for us," he wrote.
This past week, Kyiv and Moscow concluded two days of US-brokered talks in Abu Dhabi. There were no major breakthroughs, however, another signal of how difficult efforts to end the nearly four-year-old war are.
Ukrainian and Russian negotiators are reportedly set to meet for a new round of talks in the coming week in the United States.
