KYIV — Russian drones and missiles pounded the Ukrainian capital Kyiv and other cities early on Tuesday, killing at least 11 people and wounding more than 100, authorities said, following days of warnings about Moscow’s plans for a major assault.

Russia has targeted Ukraine’s power supply and infrastructure in a war now more than four years old, while Ukraine has stepped up attacks this year on Russian oil facilities. Both deny targeting civilians.

Last week, the Kremlin warned that it intended “systematic strikes” on targets in Kyiv in response to a drone attack on a dormitory in Ukraine’s Russian-held region of Luhansk, which killed 21. Ukraine denied the attack.

Photographs showed large explosions and plumes of smoke billowing over high-rise buildings in Kyiv, where overnight strikes killed four people and wounded 65, including children, according to the capital’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko.

“We couldn’t understand what was happening — some kind of apocalypse?” said Olha Mudra, speaking at the site of one strike, accompanied by her six-year-old daughter Natalia.

“Everything was covered (with debris), everything in smoke, you could see nothing,” she added, as she stood in front of a destroyed residential building and damaged cars.

Olena Dniprovska, 65, and her husband Yevhen, 64, were injured in their apartment in Kyiv’s Podilskyi district during the attack.

“I went out into the corridor with the phone, and before I understood what happened, everything fell on my head, the glass, and the door blew off,” said Dniprovska, dried blood streaked across her face and a bandage wrapped around her chin. “I ran out into the front door and started calling my husband from the room, but he was also blown out by the blast wave.”

“Now I have nowhere to live, the apartment is completely destroyed, no doors, no windows, no balcony. You can step straight from the room out onto the........

© The Times of Israel