The UN humanitarian coordinator for Ukraine, Matthias Schmale, has condemned the deadly Russian missile and drone strikes that began overnight and reportedly targeted 15 regions of the country.

Mr Schmale, in a statement on Monday, said that, like millions of people in Ukraine, he spent hours in a shelter that morning due to the ongoing wave of attacks on Ukraine by the Russian Armed Forces.

He added that civilians were reportedly killed and injured, while civilian infrastructure sustained heavy damage.

Russia carried out massive airstrikes on Ukraine in the early hours of Monday morning, launching rockets, cruise missiles, and drones.

Observers in Kyiv described it as one of the heaviest air attacks in two and a half years of war.

Explosions were reported in the suburbs of the capital and the regions of Zhytomyr, Khmelnytskyi, Ternopil, and Lviv, according to the official air-raid alert app.

According to the Ukrainian Air Force, the Russian army deployed up to 11 Tu-95 long-range bombers, which are carriers of cruise missiles.

Separately, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in Ukraine wrote on the social media platform X that boys and girls “woke up today to the sounds of air alarms and explosions.”

The office also shared photos of children and families sheltering at metro stations in the capital, Kyiv.

The attacks came in the wake of Ukraine’s recent incursion into the Kursk region in Russia and were among the most intense in weeks, according to media reports.

At least five people were killed in the strikes, which mainly targeted critical energy infrastructure, resulting in power outages and disruptions to the water supply.

Earlier this year, the UN and its partners reported that Russia had stepped up attacks on Ukraine’s energy grid, with the UN human rights office, OHCHR, recording 50 incidents in April alone.

Mr Schmale, however, said it was “unacceptable” that Ukrainian citizens had to seek safety in metro stations and other shelters instead of getting on with their lives.

The representative for the UN reproductive and sexual health agency, UNFPA, in Ukraine, Massimo Diana, also deplored the aerial assault in a post on X.

Ms Diana said the attacks “tragically claimed lives” in the city of Lutsk and in the Zhytomyr region.

“We condemn these deadly assaults on critical infrastructure and call for urgent action to protect civilians,” he said.

(NAN)