The attack lasted hours and involved around 120 missiles and 90 drones, officials in the country said. At least nine people were killed.
Russia renewed its campaign to destroy Ukraine’s battered power grid on Sunday, targeting facilities across the country with missiles and long-range drones in one of the largest and most complex bombardments of the war, Ukrainian officials said.
The attack lasted several hours and featured around 120 missiles and 90 drones, President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a statement. Air-defense teams destroyed 144 targets, but at least nine civilians were killed, officials said. Mr. Zelensky said F-16 pilots had shot down 10 targets.
“The enemy’s target was our energy infrastructure throughout Ukraine,” Mr. Zelensky said. “Unfortunately, there is damage to objects from hits and falling debris.”
Later on Sunday night, a Russian rocket slammed into a residential apartment complex in Sumy, killing at least eight people, including two children, according to Ukrainian officials. The city is near the border with the Kursk region of Russia, where Russian forces have been trying to drive out Ukrainian soldiers who seized hundreds of square miles of territory this summer.
Earlier in the day, interceptor missiles could be seen streaking across blue skies over the Ukrainian capital, before exploding in thunderous claps. Similar scenes played out across Ukraine, Ukrainian officials said.
Russia used a combination of cruise and ballistic missiles fired from bombers, warships and land-based systems as well as swarms of drones from multiple directions. Ukraine had long expected a renewed attempt to collapse its energy grid, and it has come just as winter begins to bite.
Ukrainian officials said the attack was the latest demonstration that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia remained bent not on a settlement but on the destruction of the Ukrainian state.
Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, said in a statement that the attack represented Mr. Putin’s “true response” to calls for peace. The minister added: “We need peace through strength, not appeasement.”
Precautionary emergency blackouts were announced across the country, and later Sunday, the national power utility, Ukrenergo, said restrictions on energy consumption would be needed nationwide on Monday. With explosions in nearly every region, the extent of the damage was not immediately clear.
Even when air defense does its job, the margin between life and death can be a matter of inches as debris rains down. Serhii Melnykov said he was walking near his home in Kyiv when he heard a powerful explosion, followed by an urgent call from his wife.
“She was trapped under the debris,” he said. “I immediately called the ambulance and rescuers, but by the time I got home, my wife, Anya, had already gotten out from under the rubble.”
She suffered a concussion and was in shock, he said, but was out of danger.
Rescue workers told him that they pulled a 600-pound fragment of a 3M22 Zircon hypersonic cruise missile from his apartment, he said.
Russian authorities have claimed that the Zircon can reach eight times the speed of sound, which would make it one of the fastest missiles in the world.
In both its size and variety, Ukrainian officials said the attack ranked as one of the most complex of the war. They also warned that Russia has been stockpiling missiles for months and would likely be able to carry out similar attacks in coming weeks.
Oleksandr Musiienko, head of the Center for Military Law Research, said that in addition to undermining the Ukrainian economy and causing pain, the attacks served a political goal for the Kremlin: demonstrating to President-elect Donald J. Trump “that there is no alternative but to force Ukraine to make concessions.”
He expected the attacks to continue as Mr. Putin tried “create a picture” that Ukraine was doomed.
The bombardment followed months of nightly attacks by long-range drones, an effort to wear down Ukrainian air defenses and terrorize civilians.
Before Sunday’s attacks, the United Nations warned that Russian strikes on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure could result in further mass displacement and deepen suffering for millions.
