Russian missiles hit cities across Ukraine, killing at least 6

Russia unleashed "a massive rocket attack" that hit critical infrastructure and residential buildings in 10 regions of Ukraine, the country's president said Thursday, with officials reporting at least six deaths in the largest such nighttime attack in three weeks.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the barrage that came while many people slept and knocked out power in cities across the country was an attempt by Moscow "to intimidate Ukrainians again."

Overall, Russia launched 81 missiles and eight exploding Shahed drones, according to Ukraine's Chief Commander of the Armed Forces Valerii Zaluzhnyi. Thirty-four cruise missiles were intercepted, as were four drones, he said. 

The Russian defence ministry said the attacks were in retaliation for an alleged incursion into the Bryansk region of western Russia a week earlier by what Moscow claimed were Ukrainian saboteurs. Ukraine denied the claim and warned that Moscow could use the allegations to justify stepping up its own attacks.

The Russian defence ministry said Thursday's "massive retaliation" hit military and industrial targets in Ukraine "as well as the energy facilities that supply them."

Three men and two women were killed in the Lviv region after a missile struck a residential area, Lviv Gov. Maksym Kozytskyi said. Three buildings were destroyed by fire and rescue workers were combing through rubble looking for more possible victims, he said.

A sixth person was killed and two others wounded in multiple strikes in the Dnipropetrovsk region that targeted its energy infrastructure and industrial facilities, Gov. Serhii Lysak said.

In southern Ukraine, the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, which is occupied by Russian forces, lost power as a result of the missile attacks, according to nuclear state operator Energoatom.

It is the sixth time the plant has been in a state of blackout since it was taken over by Russia months ago, forcing it to rely on 18 diesel generators that can run the station for 10 days, Energoatom said. Nuclear plants need constant power to run cooling systems and avoid a meltdown.

The plant was reconnected hours later to the energy grid, Ukrainian grid operator Ukrenergo said. But the head of the UN nuclear watchdog expressed alarm at the latest blackout, saying he was "astonished by the complacency" of members of the organization he leads, the International Atomic Energy Agency.

"Each time we are rolling a dice," IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi told its board of directors in a meeting Thursday, according to an IAEA statement. "And if we allow this to continue time after time, then one day our luck will run out."

The agency has placed teams of experts at all four of Ukraine's nuclear power plants to reduce the risk of severe accidents.

Power supply to the plant can be restored "within a day or two," Leonid Oleinyk, a press secretary at Energoatom, told The Associated Press by telephone. He said emergency repairs have already begun.

Private electricity operator DTEK reported that three of its power stations had been hit, causing severe damage and bringing preventive emergency power cuts in the Kyiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk and Odesa regions.