CNN —
Russia launched new rocket fire into Ukraine on Monday, accusing Kyiv of attacking military airfields deep within its territory.
Dozens of rockets were fired into Ukraine by Russian forces on Monday, cutting off water and electricity supplies in some areas and killing at least one person in the Ukrainian town of Kryvyi Rih and at least two people in Zaporizhia, according to local authorities.
Debris from a rocket also crossed the Ukrainian border and hit a town in Moldova.
The Ukrainian Air Force said more than 60 Russian missiles were intercepted. However, some achieved their targets, and the shelling cut off water and electricity access in Kryvyi Rih and in the southern city of Odessa, following recent shortages across the country from Russian attacks on critical infrastructure.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said Ukraine used drones to attack two Russian military airfields on Monday morning, adding that its air defenses intercepted the attacks “in the Saratov and Ryazan regions,” according to a statement from Russia’s official news agency RIA Novosti.
“On the morning of December 5, in order to disable Russian long-haul aircraft, the (Kiev) regime attempted an attack using Soviet-made UAVs [drones] at the Diaghilevo military airfields in the Ryazan region and Engels in the Saratov region,” the statement said.
“The air defenses of the Russian Aerospace Forces intercepted these Ukrainian drones flying at low altitude,” it said, adding that the destroyed drones “slightly damaged” two planes.
Three people were killed and six injured after a fuel truck exploded at Russia’s airfield near the city of Ryazan, Russian state media reported. The explosion occurred in an aircraft parking lot at the airport, rescue workers told the state news agency TASS on Monday.
The aftermath of the blast at the airfield appears to have been captured by Israeli satellite imagery company ImageSat International (ISI), which showed “burn marks and objects” near “a likely damaged Tu-22M aircraft,” it told CNN.
The second drone flew to the western Russian city of Engels, where an airbase of the same name is located.
CCTV footage geolocated by CNN appears to show an explosion lighting up the sky around 6 a.m. local time Monday morning in Engels, about 500 miles south-east of Moscow. The footage, which was shared on social media, was taken approximately 6 km from Engels-2 airfield, a strategic bomber base.
Saratov Region Governor Roman Busargin assured residents on Telegram that no civilian infrastructure was damaged, but said that “information about incidents at military facilities is being verified by law enforcement agencies.”
He admitted that information about “a loud bang and an early morning eruption in Engels” spread on social networks and the media.
Pro-Russian bloggers have said the incidents were likely an act of sabotage by Ukraine, which has not confirmed that it attacked either airfield.
The Ukrainian Air Force said by telegram that Russia fired 70 missiles on Monday. It said a “massive attack on critical infrastructure” had been repelled, with most of the missiles intercepted but some causing significant damage.
The port city of Odessa appears to be among the most affected regions. Water utility Infoksvodokanal said that in Odessa “all pumping stations and reserve lines are without electricity – therefore consumers have no water”.
“Part of the city is without electricity, some boiler houses and pumping stations are shut down,” said Oleksandr Vilkul, a military official in Kryvyi Rih.
In the capital Kyiv, about 40% of the people in the capital are without electricity after a power plant was hit on Monday, according to military official Oleksii Kuleba.
Power outages were also reported in western Ukraine’s Prykarpattia region as a result of the Moscow shelling campaign.
State-owned power company Ukrenergo has reduced electricity capacity in the Prykarpattia region by a third, said Svitlana Onyshchuk, a regional official.
The head of a major utility said the overall situation was difficult but under control. “Almost all regions of Ukraine are affected by emergency power outages. Power technicians have started to clean up the damage and work will continue overnight. We will try to return to the planned outages as soon as possible to stop emergency outages,” DTEK CEO Dmytro Sakharuk said on Telegram.
“The most complicated situation is in the Kyiv region, in the city of Kyiv, in the city of Odessa and in the northern regions of the country. This is due to both the damage and the number of consumers,” he added.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy thanked “air defense forces, our power engineers and our people” in a statement Monday, adding that power engineers had already started restoring power.
He later added that repair work would continue “in the central regions of Ukraine, Odessa, Zaporizhia and Kharkiv.”
“In order to stabilize the power grid, many regions had to switch to emergency shutdowns,” he said.
There has been much speculation about Russia’s missile stockpile – the last such wave of missile attacks on Ukraine was on November 23.
Following Monday’s attacks on Ukraine, the country’s Defense Intelligence Agency (DI) said Moscow still has enough missiles to inflict serious damage on Ukraine’s infrastructure – although stockpiles may be falling to “critical levels”.
According to DI spokesman Andrii Yusov, the shelling during the day was “another terrorist attack on peaceful civilian infrastructure, mainly energy infrastructure”.
“Regarding high-precision weapons in Russia, according to many indicators, missile stockpiles have fallen to a critical level,” Yusov said on Ukrainian television on Monday.
Further south and away from the front lines, a missile was identified in a town called Briceni in Moldova, about three kilometers from the Ukrainian border.
It is not immediately clear from the images what type of rocket it is. CNN is working to confirm the missile type.
Moldova’s Interior Ministry added in its statement: “The area where the missile was detected has been isolated by police patrol and border police. The specialist services of the Ministry of the Interior are on site.
Moldovans suffered widespread power outages after the Kremlin attacked critical infrastructure in November. At the time, Moldova’s Deputy Prime Minister and Infrastructure Minister Andrei Spinu warned of the high risk of power outages amid Russia’s grueling invasion of Ukraine.