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Jan. 26 (UPI) -- Russia launched a missile strike against Ukraine on Thursday in the wake of western allies pledging to send tanks to aid Ukrainian forces. A total of 11 people were killed in the latest wave of strikes, said State Emergency Service spokesperson Oleksandr Khorunzhyi.
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A total of 55 missiles were fired against Ukraine, 47 of which were shot down by air defense, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense said.
The Ukrainian Air Force also claims to have intercepted a number of Russian kamikaze drones.
"On the night of January 26, the Russian occupiers resumed attacks on Ukraine with the Iranian-made Shahed 136/131 kamikaze drones," reads a post on the Ukrainian air force's Facebook page.
"Most kamikaze drones were destroyed in the center of the country -- in the area of responsibility of the Air Command Center," the post continued.
Ukrainian Energy Minister Herman Haluschenko said in a Facebook post that emergency energy outages were implemented after missiles struck part of Ukraine's energy infrastructure.
"The most difficult situation is currently in Kyiv, Odessa and Vinnytsia regions," he said.
The DTEK energy company later announced on Telegram that the Kyiv region had been returned to its previous scheduled power outages and that critical infrastructure such as hospitals had been restored in Odessa.
On Wednesday, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz agreed to send 14 Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine with President Joe Biden quickly following suit with an announcement that the United States would provide 31 M1 Abrams tanks.
Scholz said Thursday, however, that the Leopard 2 tanks would not be delivered until the end of March, saying "this is not too late."
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky thanked German Chancellor Olaf Scholz for the upcoming delivery but said in his nightly address Wednesday, that more was needed to resist the Russian invasion.
"We have to unlock the supply of long-range missiles to Ukraine, it is important for us to to expand our cooperation in artillery, we have to achieve the supply of aircraft to Ukraine," Zelensky said.
