Russia fired nearly 50 missiles and 297 drones at Ukraine overnight on February 22, 2026, striking energy grids, rail networks, and water systems in one of the largest combined aerial assaults since the full-scale invasion began. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed the scale of the attack, which left parts of Kyiv without power and killed at least one person, as the conflict reached day 1,460 and the war prepared to enter its fifth year.
Scale of the Overnight Barrage
Russian forces launched a combined strike package overnight on February 21 to 22 that included 22 ballistic missiles among the nearly 50 total missiles fired, according to Zelenskyy’s statement on Telegram. The 297 drones accompanying the missile salvo made this the seventh mega-attack on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure since Russia began systematically targeting the power grid, according to Forbes reporting on the conflict. The sheer volume of munitions, combining ballistic missiles with swarms of cheaper one-way attack drones, reflects a deliberate effort to overwhelm air defenses through saturation rather than precision.
Ukraine’s Air Force reported that defenders intercepted or neutralized 274 drones and 33 missiles, but 14 missiles and 23 drones still struck 14 locations, with falling debris hitting five additional sites, according to Associated Press coverage. Three missiles remained unaccounted for. The gap between what was launched and what was stopped illustrates a growing problem for Ukrainian air defenses: even a high intercept rate still allows dozens of warheads and drones to reach their targets when the incoming volume is this large. That math has worsened with each successive mega-attack, as Russia tests how many simultaneous threats it must generate to force Ukrainian systems into overload.
Energy Grid and Civilian Infrastructure Hit Hard
The targets went beyond power plants. Zelenskyy said the strikes hit energy infrastructure, logistics and rail systems, and municipal water supplies, a combination designed to degrade both civilian life and Ukraine’s ability to move troops and materiel. People in Kyiv were left without power in the aftermath, underscoring how a single night of strikes can ripple through an urban area’s basic services. Targeting water systems alongside electricity grids compounds the humanitarian toll: without power, pumping stations fail, and residents in apartment buildings lose both heat and running water during winter conditions.
At least one man was killed in the Kyiv suburbs, according to multiple reports. The South China Morning Post reported that a separate wave of air strikes left one person dead and 15 injured, with four children among the wounded. Separately, twin blasts in Lviv killed a police officer and wounded 24 people, according to the same outlet. These casualty figures may reflect different incidents across the same night, and independent verification from the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights was not yet available for this specific attack. The UN mission in Ukraine has previously documented how sustained large-scale Russian strikes routinely kill and injure civilians, establishing a pattern that this latest barrage fits squarely within.
Timing Tied to Anniversary and Diplomatic Pressure
The assault landed on day 1,460 of Russia’s war on Ukraine, just days before the fourth anniversary of the full-scale invasion. That timing is not incidental. Major Russian strikes have repeatedly coincided with symbolic dates and diplomatic milestones, serving as both military operations and political signals. This attack came ahead of potential talks in Switzerland, and its scale appeared calibrated to demonstrate that Russia retains the capacity and willingness to inflict severe damage on civilian infrastructure regardless of any diplomatic track. By hitting energy and transport nodes simultaneously, Moscow also signaled to Kyiv’s backers that years of support have not neutralized its ability to escalate.
The political context in Europe added another layer of pressure. Hungary threatened to block new EU sanctions against Russia, according to reporting from Brussels, complicating the Western response at precisely the moment when the scale of Russian aggression would normally galvanize unity. Budapest’s veto threat creates a gap between the severity of the attacks and Europe’s ability to respond with coordinated economic punishment. For Kyiv, the combination of a massive aerial assault and fracturing European solidarity is the worst possible alignment of events heading into a fifth year of war, raising concerns that Moscow will interpret sanctions fatigue as a green light for further infrastructure attacks.
What Air Defense Gaps Mean for Civilians
Most coverage of these strikes focuses on the intercept numbers, and the figures are genuinely impressive: roughly 88 percent of the missiles and over 92 percent of the drones were stopped. But the framing obscures a harder truth. When Russia fires 297 drones and 50 missiles in a single night, even a small percentage of leakers translates into real destruction on the ground. Fourteen missiles and 23 drones that evade interception are not statistical noise; they are dozens of explosions at power substations, rail junctions, residential blocks, and water facilities. Each successful hit can trigger secondary failures that cascade through the grid, plunging entire districts into darkness or severing heat and water for tens of thousands.
This reality shapes daily life far from the front lines. Ukrainian authorities have learned to pre-emptively reroute power, shut down parts of the grid, and warn residents to charge devices and stock water before expected attacks, but the scale of this latest barrage pushed those contingency plans to their limits. Repeated strikes force constant repairs, divert scarce resources, and exhaust crews who work through the night to restore services before the next wave arrives. For civilians, the psychological impact of sirens, blackouts, and sudden loss of basic utilities compounds the physical danger, reinforcing a sense that nowhere in the country is fully safe.
Information, Accountability, and the Long War
The documentation of such attacks has become a central battlefield in its own right. Ukrainian officials, international organizations, and independent media outlets all play roles in verifying strike locations, casualty figures, and damage to civilian objects. The UN’s previous findings on patterns of harm to non-combatants provide a baseline against which new incidents can be assessed, helping to distinguish isolated battlefield events from systematic campaigns against infrastructure. In this context, consistent reporting from agencies like the Associated Press bureau in Kyiv and regional correspondents across Ukraine is crucial for establishing public records that may later inform legal and diplomatic efforts.
That information ecosystem depends not only on journalists in the field but also on the institutions that sustain their work. Outlets that have invested in long-term coverage of the war rely on reader support, subscriptions, and staff with specialized expertise to maintain operations through a protracted conflict. Appeals to subscribe to weekly editions, encourage readers to sign in for personalized news, or invite them to support independent reporting directly are part of a broader effort to ensure war coverage does not fade as the conflict drags on. Job boards such as media recruitment platforms help sustain the pipeline of correspondents, editors, and analysts needed to interpret complex military events for a global audience. In a war increasingly defined by long-range strikes and information battles, the capacity to chronicle each major attack is itself a form of resilience, preserving evidence and context even as the physical landscape comes under fire.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
