KYIV, Ukraine (AFP) — Russia fired more missiles at Ukraine in February than in any other month since at least the beginning of 2023 in overnight strikes, targeting Ukrainian energy infrastructure in particular, an Agence France-Presse (AFP) analysis showed Sunday.
Russian forces launched 288 missiles at Ukraine in February, an increase of around 113 percent compared to the 135 missiles launched in January, according to an AFP analysis of daily figures provided by the Ukrainian air force.
This is the highest number of missiles launched at night in a single month against Ukraine since Kyiv’s air force started routinely publishing statistics at the beginning of 2023.
The previous record was set in October 2025, when, according to Kyiv, the Russian military launched 270 missiles at the country.
As the harshest winter in years gripped Ukraine, heating and power outages triggered by Russian strikes have plunged hundreds of thousands into cold and darkness, sparking the most dire energy crisis since the beginning of the invasion launched in February 2022.
Moscow has targeted the Ukrainian energy grid for the fourth consecutive winter, as part of a strategy aimed at weakening the Ukrainian civilian population, Kyiv and its allies said.
Across the country, rolling power cuts have remained in place to mitigate electricity shortages.
In 2024, the International Criminal Court in The Hague issued arrest warrants for top Russian army officials for the “war crime of causing excessive” harm to civilians by striking Ukrainian energy sites.
In February, Russia also launched 5,059 long-range drones during its nighttime pummelling of Ukrainian cities and towns — an increase of around 13 percent compared to January.
In retaliation, Kyiv regularly sends its own drones to strike Russian oil depots and refineries in an attempt to cut off the key fossil fuel revenues that finance the Kremlin’s war effort.
Meanwhile, a Russian strike has killed one man and wounded four in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk, the eastern region’s military administration head said early on Sunday.
Over the border in Russia’s southern Bryansk region, a Ukrainian drone attack killed a woman in the village of Chernookovo, the governor there said.
The Ukrainian air force said it had shot down 110 of the 123 attack drones launched by Russia in the night of Saturday to Sunday, in Moscow’s latest broadside at its pro-Western neighbor.
Other Russian strikes were reported in the Black Sea port city of Odesa and in Kharkiv, where a fire caused by one of the attacks forced the evacuation of a dormitory, according to the eastern city’s mayor, Igor Terekhov.