Hello and welcome to NewsHour. It's coming to you live from the BBC World Service studios in central London.

I'm Tim Franks. Last year, for the first time, many Ukrainians celebrated Christmas on this date, the 25th of December,

a pointed shift from the Russian Orthodox tradition. Today, the Russian military has been doing all it can to make it as miserable a Christmas as possible for many in Ukraine,

with a major missile and drone attack on the country's energy infrastructure.

Air raid alerts rang out across the country.

Many people in the capital Kiev took shelter in metro stations after the alerts. Among them,

these women with their little children.

I am scared

because I have a child. Of course,

I want to be at home and celebrate.

But we had to shelter because it's scary to stay

at home. So we came to the shelter.

We want peace.

Doing such things early in the morning when people sleep, I feel sorry for Kharkiv.

Constant strikes there. I don't understand what the Russians want to achieve with this.

That's all I can say. My friend's sister lives there. She said explosions were very loud in Kharkiv.

Well, in a moment we will hear from Kharkiv, the second largest city. But first to Will Vernon, our correspondent in the capital Kiev.

And Will, these attacks, I mean, I noticed you've said in your coverage that there have been daily attacks on

Ukraine, but these were pretty big, weren't they? Yeah, that's right. I mean, you know,

this wasn't unusual in that Ukrainian cities across the country are hit by drones, missiles,

artillery, every single day, right? Not a day goes by without Ukrainian cities coming under fire. But yes, this was particularly large scale. I had my alerts on

my phone switched on for the Ukrainian air defence forces. And this morning, it was just

...