Russia launches missile attacks on Ukrainian cities

The Ukrainian president has said Ukraine "cannot be intimidated" following a series of missile attacks on Ukrainian cities.

Missiles - or rocket bombs - were fired at the capital Kyiv, and cities around the country including Lviv in the west, to Kharkiv in the east, and Odesa in the south.

Russian president Vladimir Putin said the attacks were revenge for an explosion on a key bridge over the weekend.

People are shocked and angry about what happened, as the bombs have fallen on many areas where ordinary people live.

Many people were injured and at least 14 people were killed.

The EU has called the missile strikes a "war crime".

The strikes come after a bridge linking Russia to Crimea - an area that was in Ukraine but Russia took control of in 2014 - was targeted and blown up on Saturday.

Ukraine's air force says 83 missiles were launched but that more than 43 of them were shot down.

Mr Putin says the missile strikes were "retaliation" for an attack on a 19km bridge, the longest in Europe, which is an important supply route for Russian forces fighting in Ukraine.

That attack was extremely embarrassing to Putin. He had made a big deal of building and opening the bridge in 2018, and the attack came right after his birthday - so he was under pressure to respond.

President Putin said Ukraine's intelligence forces had carried out the attack and said it was an "act of terrorism".

Ukrainian officials have not said that their forces were behind the attack but an adviser to Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky, Mykhailo Podolyak, denied Mr Putin's accusation that it was terrorism.

He wrote that there is "only one terrorist state here" and that the "whole world knows who it is".

In recent weeks, Russia's army has not been doing well in the war with Ukraine, and Ukraine has been taking lots of land they previously lost in the fighting.

Mr Putin has also announced that he's calling more Russians to come and fight in Ukraine which has led to protests in Russia and reports of many people trying to leave the country.

BBC expert Vitaly Shevchenko explained: "Russian troops have been retreating on the battlefield and this puts President Putin under a lot of pressure (in Russia).

"Without being able to achieve much progress on the battlefield, this is how he's responding."

Jens Stoltenberg, the head of the Nato group of countries, says he's spoken to Ukraine's Foreign Minister to condemn the "horrific" attacks and committed his support for Ukraine.

He said Nato would "continue supporting the brave Ukrainian people to fight back against ... aggression for as long as it takes".

The President of the European Parliament and a spokesperson for the European Commission both called Russia's attack a "war crime".

This is because the missiles were dropped in areas where people live and ordinary people were killed.

US President Joe Biden was one of many foreign leaders to speak with President Zelensky.

He promised to continue providing Ukraine with "the support needed to defend itself, including advanced air defence systems", the White House said.

Mr Biden said the attacks showed "the utter brutality" of Putin's "illegal war".

Following his conversations with foreign leaders, the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky told Ukrainians that the "world is with us" in the fight against Russia.

In his nightly speech to the Ukrainian public Mr Zelensky said:

"Ukraine cannot be intimidated. It only brings more of us together."