The second mass air attack in days has been launched by Russia across Ukraine with a barrage of rockets fired at several regions across the country. The aim of the mass attack, authorities said, appeared to be to destroy Ukraine’s power grid in the hope that damaging Ukraine in the rear will enable Russia to make gains on the battlefield.

In Kyiv explosions have been heard in the south western district of Holosiivkyi, on Ukraine’s right bank, as well as the eastern districts of Dniprovskyi and Desnyanskyi, according to Kyiv’s mayor Vitaliy Klitschko. It is not yet clear if the rockets hit their targets or the sounds were that of Ukraine’s air defence.

Elsewhere, Ukraine’s eastern and central regions of Kharkiv and Poltava, the authorities have reported power outages. The governor of Kharkiv, Oleh Syniehubov, confirmed that energy infrastructure had been hit and Ukraine’s public broadcasts Suspilne said there were power outages in the region.

A senior Ukrainian presidential official said on Friday that emergency power shutdowns were being brought in across the country after Russian missiles hit energy facilities in several regions. Russia launched dozens of missiles at Ukraine, the latest in a wave of attacks on critical infrastructure.

Two people have died and a further five injured including two children after a rocket hit a residential building in Kryvyi Rih, the head of Dnipro region, Valentyn Reznichenko said on his Telegram. The injured are being treated in hospital. The building’s entrance was destroyed in the attack, he added.

At least eight people were killed and 23 injured by Ukrainian shelling in the Russian-controlled Luhansk region of Ukraine, Russia’s state TASS news agency reported on Friday, citing an unidentified source in the emergency services. The shelling destroyed a building in the village of Lantrativka and some people were trapped under rubble, TASS said.

The head of Ukraine’s armed forces believes Russia will make a renewed attempt at capturing the capital, Kyiv, after its previous attack was repelled earlier this year. In an interview with the Economist, Gen Valeriy Zaluzhny said he was trying to prepare for Russian forces to have another go at taking the city, possibly in February or March.

Russian shelling killed two people, including a Red Cross worker, in Kherson on Thursday and completely cut power in the southern city, Ukrainian officials said, with temperatures near freezing. Moscow-allied officials in the Russian-occupied city of Donetsk, meanwhile, said they had come under some of the heaviest shelling in years from Ukrainian forces, leaving one person dead.