TOP HEADLINES

· A wave of Russian missile strikes on Kyiv and other major Ukrainian cities have killed at least five and injured dozens more, in what is being seen as revenge for an attack on Russia's bridge to Crimea, an incident President Vladimir Putin has declared a terrorist attack.

· Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Moscow's strikes had been designed to inflict "as much damage as possible" on civilians, accusing Russia of trying to destroy Ukraine's energy system and wipe his country "off the face of the earth."

· Putin confirmed on Monday that Moscow had carried out the attacks on Ukraine, saying it was a response for Kyiv's "terrorist acts" against Russia, pledging a "harsh response" for the Crimea bridge explosion. 

· Ukraine says it shot down at least 41 of the 75 missiles launched, but Prime Minister Denys Shmygal reported that 11 infrastructure facilities in Kyiv and eight other regions were damaged in the flurry of missiles, with power, water or heat services heavily affected.

· China's Foreign Ministry has responded to the intensification of the conflict by calling for de-escalation of the situation.

· French President Emmanuel Macron reaffirmed his full support for Ukraine after holding an "urgent call" with Zelenskyy on Monday following Russia's latest attacks.

· Putin ally Belarus's President Alexander Lukashenko has claimed that Ukraine is preparing an attack on his country's territory, adding that Belarus and Russia would deploy a joint military task force in response. He did not specify where.

· The U.S. said it would continue to arm Ukraine but the White House declined to directly comment on the explosion that damaged Russia's road-and-rail bridge to Crimea, a key strategic route for Moscow's military campaign in Ukraine's south.

· In Russia's latest attack on the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia, Ukrainian officials said fresh shelling had destroyed an apartment block, just one day after a similar strike killed at least 13 people and wounded more than 70. Russia has denied targeting civilians.

· Putin will meet the head of the UN's nuclear watchdog on Tuesday in Russia, the Kremlin said, as the body continues to push for a demilitarized zone around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine.

· Moscow's forces are coming closer to the strategic town of Bakhmut, having advanced up to 2 kilometers towards the key eastern hub over the past week, a British intelligence update said.

· Ukraine's economy shrank by an estimated 30 percent in the first three quarters of 2022, with bad harvest weather adding to the dire financial impacts of the war, the economy ministry said.

IN DETAIL

Russian missile strikes on Kyiv, major Ukrainian cities

Russia hit cities across Ukraine with a flurry of missile strikes during rush hour on Monday morning, killing civilians and destroying infrastructure in apparent revenge after Putin declared the car-bombing of Russia's bridge to Crimea a "terrorist" attack.

Cruise missiles ripped through busy intersections, parks and tourist sites in downtown Kyiv, with an intensity only witnessed at the start of the conflict when Russian forces attempted to capture the Ukrainian capital.

Explosions were also reported in Lviv, Ternopil and Zhytomyr in Ukraine's west, Dnipro and Kremenchuk in central Ukraine, Zaporizhzhia in the south and Kharkiv in the east.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the rush hour attacks appeared to have been purposefully timed to kill people.

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More volleys of missiles struck the capital again later in the morning. Kyiv city police said at least five people had been killed and 12 wounded in the capital.

"They are trying to destroy us and wipe us off the face of the earth," Zelenskyy said on the Telegram messaging app. "The air raid sirens do not subside throughout Ukraine. There are missiles hitting. Unfortunately, there are dead and wounded."

He later said the two main targets had been energy infrastructure and people.

"Such a time and such targets were specially chosen to cause as much damage as possible," Zelenskyy said.

Following the attacks, Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba tweeted that Putin was "a terrorist who talks with missiles." 

Kyiv's mayor and former world heavyweight boxing champion Vitali Klitschko said on social media that the strikes from "Russian terrorists" on the capital had hit important infrastructure.

Response to Crimea bridge blast

The aerial campaign came two days after a bomb damaged the only bridge over the Kerch Strait connecting Russia to the Crimea peninsula, which Putin on Sunday called "an act of terrorism aimed at destroying critically important civilian infrastructure."

"This was devised, carried out and ordered by the Ukrainian special services," he said in a video on the Kremlin's Telegram channel.

Ukraine has not claimed responsibility for the blast on the bridge but has celebrated it. Senior Russian officials demanded a swift response from the Kremlin ahead of a meeting of Putin's security council on Monday.

Ahead of the meeting, former Russian president and staunch Putin ally Dmitry Medvedev said that Moscow could only respond to "this crime by directly killing terrorists, as is the custom elsewhere in the world. This is what Russian citizens expect."

Cover image: Cars are seen on fire in Kyiv after deadly Russian missile strikes hit the capital and other major urban hubs in Ukraine. /Valentyn Ogirenko/Reuters