KYIV, Ukraine — President Vladimir V. Putin unleashed a far-reaching series of missile strikes against cities across Ukraine on Monday, hitting the center of Kyiv and other areas removed from the front line, within the broadest assault against civilians because the early days of Russia’s invasion.
Mr. Putin said the strikes on almost a dozen cities were retaliation for a blast that destroyed sections of a bridge linking Russia to the Crimean Peninsula, though additionally they seemed intended to appease hard-liners in Russia who had been openly critical over the prosecution of the war.
Denouncing the bombing of the Kremlin-built bridge, an embarrassing blow, as a “terrorist attack,” Mr. Putin threatened more strikes if Ukraine hit Russian targets again.
“Nobody must have any doubt about it,” he said.
The attacks modified little or nothing on the battlefield, where Russia has been losing ground for weeks, but they left neighborhoods across Ukraine battered and bloodied.
Buildings toppled, windows blew out, and blazes erupted. Civilians making their morning commute rushed to whatever shelter they might find as sirens blared warnings of incoming cruise missiles and so-called kamikaze drones. No less than 14 people were killed and 89 wounded, the Ukrainian authorities said, while power and water were knocked out in quite a few cities.
“There isn’t a protected place,” said one Ukrainian in Kyiv, Alla Rohatniova, 48, who had fled to the capital after her home within the Kharkiv region was destroyed, only to seek out herself over again under attack. “Without delay, we don’t know where they’ll strike. It could possibly be anywhere.”
The targeting of civilian areas drew condemnations from leaders across the West.
“Shocked and appalled by the vicious attacks on Ukrainian cities,” said the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen. “Putin’s Russia has again shown the world what it stands for: brutality and terror.”
President Biden said, “These attacks only further reinforce our commitment to face with the people of Ukraine for so long as it takes.”
Even countries which have generally avoided expressing any criticisms of the Kremlin since Russian troops poured across their neighbor’s border on Feb. 24 spoke out.
“All countries deserve respect for his or her sovereignty and territorial integrity,” said a spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry. In Recent Delhi, an official said, “India is deeply concerned on the escalation of the conflict in Ukraine.”
Russia has repeatedly insisted that it has limited its attacks to military targets, but there was no evidence of that on Monday as greater than 80 cruise missiles and 24 self-destructing drones wreaked havoc as they exploded in cities in nearly every corner of the country.
“With all these strikes across all of the territory of Ukraine, they didn’t hit one military goal, only civilian ones,” an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky, Oleksiy Arestovych, said in an interview.
Ukrainian officials said they’d been capable of intercept several of the rockets, but many more slipped through.
“We have now to repel these attacks using Soviet-era weapons, which we possess an insufficient quantity of,” Ukraine’s top general, Valeriy Zaluzhny, said on Twitter.
Mr. Zelensky said that in a phone call with Mr. Biden on the eve of a Group of seven virtual meeting, he had urged the American president to supply Ukraine with more advanced air-defense systems.
Despite all of the missiles that found their targets, experts agreed that what didn’t appear seriously damaged within the attacks was the Ukrainian military’s ability to wage war. For weeks, it has been retaking occupied towns, one after one other.
Indeed, Russia’s assault on Monday may find yourself backfiring, said Konrad Muzyka, a military analyst with Rochan Consulting.
“I don’t think they’ll have a strategic impact,” he said, “unless we’re talking about increasing morale on the Ukrainian side and perhaps speeding up some deliveries of military equipment from the West.”
If Ukraine’s soldiers were spared, its civilians weren’t. Strikes hit from Lviv within the west to Mykolaiv within the south and to Kharkiv within the northeast. In Kyiv, Russian ordnance struck a playground, museums and a preferred pedestrian bridge in the middle of town.
But over the course of the day, the aim of the attacks looked as if it would grow clearer: Moscow was intent on knocking out critical infrastructure, depriving Ukrainians of sunshine and warmth as winter approached.
By Monday afternoon, 4 regions — Lviv, Poltava, Sumy and Kharkiv — were without electricity, officials said. In Kharkiv, electrically powered trolleys, buses and trams glided to a stop. Electric trains headed west from Kyiv never made it out of the station. In all, 11 infrastructure sites were reported to be hit.
“Today, the enemy is testing us,” said Ihor Terekhov, the mayor of Kharkiv. “The aggressor takes out his anger on the civilian population.”
Ukrainian officials said they’d resort to rolling blackouts to avoid overloading backup electrical lines, and warned residents to brace themselves for outages.
By Monday evening, electricity was reconnected to most of Kharkiv, the State Emergency Service announced in a Facebook post. Power had also been mostly restored in Lviv, and all residents should expect to have water by morning, Andriy Sadovyi, town’s mayor, said in a Twitter post.
Many of the targets, said Mr. Arestovych, the Zelensky adviser, were infrastructure accountable for providing heat and electricity to civilians. Ukraine’s military, he said, won’t be affected. “They don’t count on the regular power grids,” he said. “They’ve their generators, their very own means of manufacturing electricity.”
The tactic of attempting to freeze Ukrainians into submission is just not latest. The Kremlin has for years studied Ukraine’s energy networks and has sought to control prices or cut natural gas deliveries to influence politics. Twice before, Russia has cut natural gas supplies to Ukraine in midwinter.
Now, it’s pursuing the identical goal with bombs.
The approach could also be unlikely to force Ukrainians to the bargaining table, experts said.
“Bombardment could be very weak efficacy, and typically only builds resolve,” said Michael Kofman, the director of Russia studies at C.N.A., a defense research institute based in Virginia.
But as Russian forces struggle on the battlefield, such strikes on infrastructure targets may allow the Kremlin to increase the war indefinitely by squeezing the Ukrainian economy and quashing any hope of a return to normalcy, a hope raised by Ukraine’s recent military successes.
Mr. Putin can be fighting a war on two fronts, and only considered one of them is in Ukraine. The opposite is in Moscow, where he has faced unusually vocal criticism from pro-war Russians who argue that he must be hitting Ukraine much harder. That might also help explain the various civilian targets hit on Monday.
Within the Russian capital, nonetheless, there seemed to be little awareness on Monday morning about what had happened. In a single chic neighborhood, people soaked up the sun, while elsewhere, many Muscovites were getting on with their lives, rushing to work or appointments.
Most individuals who were asked by a reporter for The Recent York Times for a response to the strikes said they’d not followed the news. Those that did know concerning the strikes seemed unperturbed.
Vladimir, a 37-year-old army veteran who works in construction, cheered the newest destruction in Ukraine, calling it “just just a little warning shot,” and said he hoped more would follow. But Russia’s real enemy, he said, was america.
“It will be significant to strike not Ukraine — since it is a dependent country that isn’t guilty of very much — but directly on America,” he said, echoing Mr. Putin’s claims. “Because America is in control of every thing and is destroying every thing.”
But on Tuesday, Ukraine was struck, time and again.
In Kyiv, a goal of Mr. Putin’s invasion within the early days, many had grown relaxed because the combat moved to the east and south of Ukraine. Weeds had begun to sprout from the sandbags used to guard monuments and statues within the capital from blasts. As recently as Saturday night, young people had crowded bars, a lot of them toasting the sooner bridge attack that had so enraged the Kremlin.
Then, the air-raid sirens began sounding.
Michael Schwirtz reported from Kyiv, Ukraine; Andrew E. Kramer from Kryvyi Rih, Ukraine; Megan Specia from Kyiv; and Eric Nagourney from Recent York. Valerie Hopkins contributed reporting from Moscow, and Eric Schmidt and Michael D. Shear from Washington.
