RUSSIAN President Vladimir Putin claimed a massive air attack on Ukraine today was in response to strikes on Russia by US and British-supplied missiles last week.

The latest attack on 17 energy infrastructure targets comes a day after the White House said that it wanted Ukraine to increase the size of its military by drafting more troops and reducing the age of conscription into its military.

The Russians said that they fired 100 drones and 90 missiles, although the Ukrainian air force claimed to have shot down 76 cruise missiles and three other types of missile as well as 32 drones. 

President Putin said that over the past two days Russia had fired 100 missiles and 466 drones at Ukraine, saying they were a response to Ukraine using US and British-made missiles to hit targets on Russian soil after gaining permission to do so from US President Joe Biden.

Explosions were reported in Kiev, Kharkiv, Rivne, Khmelnytskyi, Lutsk and many other cities in central and western Ukraine.

“Attacks on energy facilities are happening all over Ukraine,” Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko said in a post on Facebook. He added that emergency power outages were implemented nationwide.

Targeting civilian energy infrastructure is a war crime.

Mr Putin also threatened today to use a new intermediate-range ballistic missile, called Oreshnik (“hazel”), against “decision-making centres” in Kiev.

The missile, launched for the first time at Ukraine last week, has six warheads and flies at 10 times the speed of sound, according to Mr Putin, who declared that it can’t be intercepted by existing air defence systems.

President Volodymyr Zelensky said: “Each such attack proves that air defence systems are needed now in Ukraine, where they save lives, and not at storage bases.”

A senior Biden administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said on Wednesday that the White House wants Ukraine to lower the mobilisation age to 18 from the current age of 25 to expand the pool of fighting-age men available to help a badly outnumbered Ukraine in its war with Russia.

The official said “the pure maths” of Ukraine’s situation now is that it needs more troops in the fight. 

Ukraine says it needs about 160,000 additional troops to keep up with its battlefield needs but has previously ruled out lowering the conscription age.