Referenews

Twin blasts rang out in Kyiv during the morning rush hour, as a sizable part of the capital city’s population sheltered in underground subway stations and basements of multistory homes while others, undeterred by air-raid sirens, continued on to work in offices and stores. 

Serhiy Popko, the head of Kyiv’s military administration, said air-defense teams had shot down all 16 missiles fired at the city but that debris from some of the downed projectiles had damaged three buildings and a vehicle as well as a factory and a children’s playground near the city center.

Three people were injured as a result of the attacks, including a 14-year-old girl, said Kyiv’s mayor,

Vitali Klitschko.

Mr. Klitschko said two of the wounded were pulled from the ruins of damaged buildings and were being treated by medics. He warned residents to prepare for new power outages.

“Charge your phones and other devices. Gather water supplies,” he wrote on Telegram.

Debris from a downed rocket also damaged energy infrastructure in Odessa, in Ukraine’s south, authorities there said, adding that 21 rockets were shot down by air defenses in the region. Vitaliy Kim, the governor of the adjacent Mykolaiv region, said Russia had also used Iranian-made Shahed-136 drones in Thursday’s attacks.  

Russian officials didn’t immediately comment on the missile strikes. But Moscow’s defense ministry posted on its official Telegram channel a picture of a missile firing with the caption: “Kalibrs will never stop,” a reference to Kalibr missiles used by Russian forces.

Faced with losses on the battlefield, and with its forces stalled in their campaign to take further Ukrainian territory, Russia has stepped up the missile salvos in a bid to deprive Ukrainians of heat and electricity and weaken support for the defense effort. But so far there has been no new mass exodus from the country.

The attacks, which have struck cities across Ukraine with regularity since early October, have caused damage to key infrastructure that has compounded over time, leaving millions of Ukrainians living with regular power outages and relying on wood-burning stoves to keep homes warm this winter. Ukrainian repair crews have worked overtime in recent months to repair infrastructure struck by Russian missiles, but the work hasn’t kept up with the pace of attacks.

Ukrainian officials say that after successful counteroffensives by their forces recaptured Russian-held areas in the northeastern Kharkiv and southern Kherson regions, the front lines have largely become static as winter deepens.

“The situation is just stuck,”

Kyrylo Budanov,

the head of Ukrainian military intelligence, told the BBC in an interview published on Thursday. “It doesn’t move.”

Mr. Budanov said Russia was “now completely at a dead end” and suffering significant losses, adding that the Kremlin had likely decided to announce another mobilization of conscripts. But he said Ukraine was still short of arms and equipment needed to advance on Russian-held areas.

“We can’t defeat them in all directions comprehensively. Neither can they,” he said. “We’re very much looking forward to new weapons supplies, and to the arrival of more advanced weapons.”

Mr. Budanov said Russian missile and drone attacks across Ukraine were likely to continue, but that Russia’s missile stocks were dwindling and Russian industry was unable to replenish them.

The most contested part of Ukraine after 10 months of fighting is the eastern Donbas area, where Ukraine says its military is closing in on the strategically important city of Kreminna as other units continue to defend Bakhmut to the south from a Russian offensive. 

A capture of Bakhmut by Russia would boost morale for its troops after months on the defensive, and Ukraine is under some pressure to show Western allies that it can keep up its territorial gains after the impressive victories in Kharkiv and Kherson.

Russian-installed officials in the eastern Luhansk region said Thursday that Kyiv’s forces had shored up their positions in Siversk, a small city near Bakhmut in the neighboring Donetsk region, which Russian forces have been trying to seize since the summer, according to Russian state news agency TASS.

Photos: Resilience and Resistance in Ukraine

The Kremlin, meanwhile, is continuing to try to cement control of the Ukrainian territory its forces have captured. On Thursday, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin, whom President

Vladimir Putin

has tasked with rebuilding occupied territories, said Moscow is planning on finishing a water pipeline to the eastern Donetsk region from Russia’s neighboring Rostov region by March, in comments carried by Russian state news agencies.

Work on repairing the railway track on Russia’s bridge across the Kerch Strait to the Crimean Peninsula is ahead of schedule, Mr. Khusnullin said, saying it would also be finished by March.

An October attack on the bridge, which Mr. Putin opened in 2018 to great fanfare in Moscow, was part of an apparent campaign by Kyiv to remind Russia to stay on guard even as Moscow tries to sap Ukrainian morale with near-daily missile barrages across the country. 

Ukraine has also repeatedly demonstrated that it can strike military targets deep in Russian territory.

Air defenses near Russia’s Engels air base in the Saratov region, located some 350 miles from the Ukrainian border, shot down an unidentified object on Thursday, the regional governor, Roman Busargin, wrote on his Telegram channel.

“Please remain calm,” he told residents. “Evacuation from the city isn’t necessary.”

Three Russian service members were killed by a drone strike on the strategic hub for Russian bombers earlier this week, Moscow said, in the second apparent attack by Ukraine on the base this month. 

Write to Matthew Luxmoore at matthew.luxmoore@wsj.com and Evan Gershkovich at evan.gershkovich@wsj.com