Russia launched wide-scale raids, mostly using missiles, on various sectors of Ukrainian territory during the rush hour this morning, hitting homes and industrial facilities and injuring several civilians, Ukrainian officials said.

An airstrike alert was declared across Ukraine at around 06:00 (local and Greek time), with the Air Force announcing that cruise missiles and, in some areas, ballistic missiles had been fired.

“The enemy is viciously attacking peaceful towns,” Oleksandr Vilkul, the mayor of the city of Krevi Ri (south), said via Telegram.

Mr Vilcool said he would release more information on the damage after the attack was over.

Neither what the targets are nor the full scope of the Russian attack is clear. There has been no comment from the Russian side at this stage.

Anatoly Kurtev, secretary of the city council in the city of Zaporizhia, said via Telegram that a rocket attack had injured residents, without giving a more specific account.

The regional governor in Zaporizhia, Yuri Malashko, spoke for his part about five explosions and at least two injuries in the capital of the same name. “Rockets hit areas where houses are located,” the governor stressed.

At least one woman was injured in rocket strikes in Kharkiv (Kharkov in Russian), Ukraine’s second-largest city. Mayor Ihor Terekhov, who made this information public via Telegram, also emphasized that industrial facilities were affected and a fire broke out.

And in other Ukrainian cities, including Dnipropetrovsk and Khmelnytskyi, “massive rocket attacks” were reported.

Two years after Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine, the warring parties are escalating airstrikes on each other’s territories as their forces struggle to advance across the sprawling front line.