The prolonged barrage began in midmorning and lasted for hours, hitting the capital of Kyiv, the western city of Lviv near Poland, and the port of Odesa on the Black Sea, among other population centers.

Ukrainian drones struck a Russian fuel depot, oil pumping station and a refinery in an escalating campaign of strikes against energy infrastructure often hundreds of miles inside Russia.

After the United States and Israel began their war against Iran this year, those two countries and Persian Gulf nations used hundreds of costly interceptor missiles to shoot down inexpensive Iranian-made Shaheds. Ukraine quickly offered its cheap interceptor drones, without A.I. systems, as an alternative.