Deliberately depriving Ukrainians of electricity and heating during the cold winter months was the biggest attack on a nation's health since World War II.

[14][15] The strikes were condemned by Western groups, with the European Commission describing them as "barbaric"[16] and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg calling them "horrific and indiscriminate".

[18] The International Criminal Court (ICC) indicted four Russian officials for war crimes connected with attacks against civilian infrastructure, including former Minister of Defence Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov.

In the early weeks of the war, aside from purely military fronts,[19] plagued by poor assessments, preparations and blunders,[20] Russia had bombed both information infrastructure[21] and fuel facilities.

[23] For months thereafter, Russia continued to hit Ukrainian infrastructure such as railways, fuel depots and bridges, to hinder the delivery of weapons to the front lines.

[25] According to the Ukrainian Main Directorate of Intelligence, Russian troops received orders from the Kremlin to prepare for massive missile strikes on Ukraine's civilian infrastructure on 2 and 3 October.

[citation needed] Russian forces hit the Karachun dam on the outskirts of Kryvyi Rih with up to eight cruise missiles on 14 September, damaging the gates, hydro-mechanical equipment, crane, and administrative buildings, and causing the river Inhulets to overflow its banks.

[48] In the centre of Dnipro, the bodies of people killed at an industrial site on the city's outskirts were found, with windows in the area blown out and glass strewn on the street.

[65] On 27 October missile strikes reduced the country's energy capacity further, with the effect of extending the blackout periods in Kyiv, Zhytomyr and Chensky, and northern Chernihiv regions.

Ukrainian Army chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi said 12 of the 20 missiles were shot down by air defence and caused damage to a hotel and an isolated house in Kyiv.

[107] On 26 January, a day after Ukraine secured agreement with the US and Germany to supply battle tanks, Russia launched an overnight drone attack followed by a number of missile strikes targeting infrastructure.

Russian officials claimed it damaged railway infrastructure and an ammunition depot which was seemingly confirmed with social media videos of a blaze in Pavlograd.

Mykola Lukashuk, the head of the Dnipro regional council claimed that an industrial zone, 19 apartment buildings and 25 homes were damaged or destroyed during the attack.

In addition, Valerii Zaluzhnyi claimed Ukraine had shot down nine Kalibr cruise missiles from ships in the Black Sea and three Iskanders fired from land.

[138] Russian forces also struck the floodgates of a hydroelectric dam in Donetsk Oblast using an S-300 antiaircraft missile in the Battle of Karlivka on 25 May, threatening the villages of Halytsynivka, Zhelanne-1, and Zhelanne-2 on the Vovcha River, flooding six homes, and leading to 26 evacuations.

[157] On the morning of 21 September, Russia launched a mass wave attack across several regions of Ukraine, killing 2 and injuring at least 26, and hitting a residential building, hotel, warehouses, a dormitory, and fuel and service stations.

[158] Ukraine's electricity grid operator Ukrenergo said the morning's Russian bombardment was the first major enemy attack on power infrastructure in six months and caused "partial blackouts in Rivne, Zhytomyr, Kyiv, Dnipropetrovsk, and Kharkiv regions".

[167][168] On 2 January, in a more targeted attack than 4 days prior, and of a similarly large magnitude of ranged weapons, preliminarily 5 people were killed and 119 injured in Kyiv and Kharkiv.

"[199] Nicu Popescu, Deputy Prime Minister of Moldova, announced that three Russian missiles launched on 10 October from the Black Sea aimed at Ukraine crossed through Moldovan airspace.

[220] The Netherlands Defence Minister, Kajsa Ollongren wrote in a letter to parliament 12 October, that the attacks "can only be met with unrelenting support for Ukraine and its people."

President Biden "expressed his condemnation of Russia's missile strikes across Ukraine, including in Kyiv, and conveyed his condolences to the loved ones of those killed and injured in these senseless attacks.

[230] The UK's Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak visited Kyiv on 19 November, announcing a further £50m package of defence aid including 125 anti-aircraft guns, radars and anti-drone technology.

"[233] The head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, Dmytro Kuleba, announced the immediate interruption of his African visits due to massive missile attacks.

[199] Ukrainian officials told The Washington Post that the indirect talks in Doha had been postponed "due to the situation in the Middle East",[199] but later declined to comment.

[244] Russia's Ministry of Defence stated on 10 October that it was satisfied with the outcome of the strikes on Ukraine and claimed that all the targets, including military and energy objects, had been destroyed.

[249] Russian propagandists and government officials, such as Margarita Simonyan, Tigran Keosayan, Vladimir Solovyov, Evgeniy Poddubny and Ramzan Kadyrov,[250][251] welcomed the missile strikes on Ukraine,[252][253] with some calling to target power stations before winter.

[263] On 7 March 2023 Dmitry Ivanov, a mathematics student at Moscow State University, was sentenced to eight-and-a-half years in prison under Russia's 2022 war censorship laws for posting on Telegram about Russian strikes against Ukrainian infrastructure.

[264] On 30 May 2023 Putin claimed that Russia only bombed "with high-accuracy long-range weapons and targets precisely military infrastructure facilities, or warehouses with ammunition or fuel and lubricants used in combat operations.

Volodymyr Kudrytskyi, CEO of Ukrenergo, said that Russian missile attacks had caused "colossal" destruction and that practically no power stations in Ukraine had been left untouched.

[287][288][289] On 25 June 2024, the ICC indicted former Minister of Defence Sergei Shoigu and Head of General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation Valery Gerasimov for the same three counts.