Russia launched a barrage of missiles and drones at Ukraine on Wednesday, targeting gas infrastructure and other energy facilities in western regions in a new attack on the struggling power system in the depths of winter.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that the Russian forces launched more than 40 missiles during the morning attack and used more than 70 drones overnight.

Ukrainian air defences shot down 30 missiles and 47 drones, the air force said. Another 27 drones were “lost,” in reference to Kyiv using electronic warfare to redirect them.

“Another massive Russian attack. It’s the middle of winter, and the target for the Russians remains unchanged: our energy infrastructure,” Zelenskyy said in a social media post on X.

“Among their objectives were gas and energy facilities that sustain normal life for our people.”

The capital Kyiv also came under attack, with hundreds of residents taking shelter in underground metro stations across the city, sleeping on yoga mats and sitting on folded chairs with their pets.

The governor of Ukraine’s western Lviv region said two energy facilities in the Drohobych and Stryi districts were damaged. In neighbouring Ivano-Frankivsk, the governor said air defences were fending off Russian attacks on facilities.

The air force also said that gas infrastructure facilities in the Kharkiv region in the northeast were attacked.

Russian Defence Ministry said that its forces conducted strikes on Ukrainian energy facilities, successfully hitting all designated targets.

In a further statement issued after midnight, the Russian ministry said the strikes were in response to Ukrainian attacks using U.S. ATACMS missiles and British-made Storm Shadow missiles, and an attack on Russia’s Krasnodar region aimed at halting gas flows through the Turkstream pipeline network.

The ministry said its forces had made a successful strike on a large gas storage facility in the western Ukrainian town of Stryi.

Ukraine calls on allies for air defence help

Ukraine’s oil and gas company Naftogaz said there were no outages, adding that “gas supplies to the population were uninterrupted.”

Ukrainians use natural gas mainly for heating homes and cooking. The country uses gas stored over the summer months to use in winter, when daily production does not cover consumption.

Ukraine’s underground gas storage facilities are located in the western part of the country, including in the Stryi area. Their role has grown since Kyiv refused to extend a gas transit agreement with Russia.

Russia has stepped up its bombardments of Ukraine’s power sector and other energy infrastructure since March 2024, knocking out half of the available generating capacity and forcing long, rolling blackouts across the country.

Ukrainian cities, businesses and residents rushed to install new generating capacities, including solar panels, batteries, generators and other equipment to increase their energy independence and survive the critical cold months.

Zelenskyy, visiting neighbouring Poland on Wednesday, reiterated his pleas to Kyiv’s Western allies to strengthen Ukraine’s air defence.

“We have also discussed licences for the production of air defence systems and missiles for them, which could serve as one of the effective security guarantees for Ukraine. This is both realistic and necessary to implement.”

Meanwhile, Russia and Ukraine exchanged 25 prisoners of war after negotiations mediated by the United Arab Emirates, Russia’s Defence Ministry said in a statement.

Ceasefire will be ‘hard work’: Trump’s diplomat pick

The last days of U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration have been marked by a flurry of activity on the Ukraine file. The U.S. last week announced another $500 million US in military aid, including weapons and air defence systems.

The weapons are funded through presidential drawdown authority, meaning they can be pulled directly from U.S. stockpiles.

Washington had previously committed more than $63.5 billion US in security assistance to Ukraine since Russia’s invasion.

U.S. announces nearly $6B in military, budget aid to Ukraine

Advisers to U.S. president-elect Donald Trump now concede that the Ukraine war will take months or even longer to resolve, a sharp reality check on his biggest foreign policy promise — to strike a peace deal on his first day in the White House.

Two Trump associates, who have discussed the war in Ukraine with the president-elect, told Reuters they were looking at a timeline of months to resolve the conflict, describing the Day 1 promises as a combination of campaign bluster and a lack of appreciation of the intractability of the conflict and the time it takes to staff up a new administration.

Sen. Marco Rubio, Trump’s pick to be U.S. secretary of state, said on Wednesday both Russia and Ukraine will need to make concessions to end the war in Ukraine.

“It’s going to be hard work,” Rubio said at his confirmation hearing before the Senate’s foreign relations committee. He said he hoped a ceasefire could be achieved in the conflict but both sides need to have leverage for that to occur.

Russia has also sent mixed signals regarding a possible peace deal, welcoming direct talks with Trump, while dismissing some of the ideas put forth by his advisers as unworkable.

Russia has made significant battlefield gains in recent months. While those gains have come at a huge cost in terms of men and material, many analysts argue Russian President Vladimir Putin has an incentive to slow-walk a deal while he tries to gain control of more Ukrainian territory.

John Herbst, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine now at the Atlantic Council think-tank in Washington, pointed to comments earlier this month by Vasily Nebenzya, Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations, who said that the peace plans put forward by Trump’s advisers were “nothing of interest.”

Ukraine cuts decades-long flow of Russian gas to Europe

The U.S. Treasury Department said in a statement Wednesday that Washington was imposing fresh sanctions on almost 100 targets — including Russian banks and companies operating in Russia’s energy sector — that were previously sanctioned by the United States, a move it said increases secondary sanctions risk for critical Russian entities.

Washington also took action against a sanctions evasion scheme established between actors in Russia and China, as well as Keremet Bank, a Kyrgyzstan-based financial institution that co-ordinated with Russian officials, and a bank designated by the United States to circumvent sanctions, according to the statement.

The U.S. in the past week also unveiled its broadest package of sanctions so far targeting Russia’s oil and gas revenues.

Meanwhile, Reuters reported on Tuesday that the European Commission intends to propose a ban on imports of Russian primary aluminum in its 16th package of sanctions against Russia over its war in Ukraine.