Russian forces have launched massive missile strikes on Ukraine's Kyiv and Chernihiv regions, areas that hadn't been targeted in weeks, while Ukrainian officials announced an operation to liberate an occupied region in the country's south.

The Kyiv region was attacked with six missiles launched from the Black Sea, hitting a military unit in the village of Liutizh on the outskirts of the capital, according to Oleksii Hromov, a senior official with Ukraine’s General Staff.

He said that the attack ruined one building and damaged two others, and that Ukrainian forces also shot down one of the missiles in the town of Bucha.

Kyiv regional governor Oleksiy Kuleba said the early Thursday morning attack wounded 15 people, including five civilians.

Mr Kuleba linked the strikes with the Day of Statehood, which Ukraine was marking for the first time on Thursday.

"Russia, with the help of missiles, is mounting revenge for the widespread popular resistance, which the Ukrainians were able to organise precisely because of their statehood," Mr Kuleba told Ukrainian television.

"Ukraine has already broken Russia's plans and will continue to defend itself."

Chernihiv governor Vyacheslav Chaus reported that multiple missiles were fired from the territory of Belarus at the village of Honcharivska.

Russian troops withdrew from the Kyiv and Chernihiv regions months ago after failing to capture either.

The renewed strikes come a day after the leader of pro-Kremlin separatists in the east, Denis Pushilin, publicly urged Russian forces to "liberate Russian cities founded by the Russian people — Kyiv, Chernihiv, Poltava, Odesa, Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, Lutsk."

Kharkiv, Ukraine's second largest city, also came under a barrage of shelling overnight, its mayor Ihor Terekhov said. 

Authorities said a police officer was killed in Russian shelling of a power plant in the Kharkiv region.

The southern city of Mykolaiv was fired on as well, with one person reportedly sustaining injuries.

In the central Ukrainian city of Kropyvnytskyi on Thursday, the regional governor Andriy Raikovych said five people had been killed and 25 wounded in a Russian missile strike on a flight school.

Mr Raikovych told a news briefing that two missiles had struck hangars at the National Aviation University Flight Academy around 12:20 pm local time.

"There are victims, dead and wounded. Twenty-five have already been taken to medical institutions — they were wounded. Five were killed, one of them from the military," he said.

Counteroffensive 'gathering momentum'

Meanwhile, the Ukrainian military continued to counterattack in the occupied southern region of Kherson, striking a key bridge over the Dnieper River on Wednesday.

Ukrainian media on Thursday quoted Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovich as saying that the operation to liberate Kherson "has already begun."

Mr Arestovich said Ukrainian forces were planning to isolate Russian troops in Kherson and leave them with three options — to "retreat, if possible, surrender or be destroyed."

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Oleksiy Danilov, the secretary of Ukraine's National Security and Defence Council, in televised remarks on Wednesday said he was "cautious" in assessing the timeline of the possible counteroffensive.

"I would really like it to be much faster," he said, adding that "the enemy is now concentrating the maximum number [of forces] precisely in the Kherson direction."

The British military estimated Thursday that Ukraine's counteroffensive in Kherson is "gathering momentum".

"Their forces have highly likely established a bridgehead south of the Ingulets River, which forms the northern boundary of Russian-occupied Kherson," the British Defence Ministry said on Thursday.

It added that Ukraine has used its new long-range artillery to damage at least three of the bridges across the Dnieper River, "which Russia relies upon to supply the areas under its control."

The 1,000 metre-long Antonivsky bridge, which Ukrainian forces struck on Wednesday, is likely to be "unusable," the British Defence Ministry concluded.

Donetsk remains under heavy Russian attack

Ukraine's presidential office said Thursday morning that Russian shelling of cities and villages over the past 24 hours killed at least five civilians, all of them in the eastern Donetsk region, and wounded nine more.

Fighting in recent weeks has focused on the Donetsk region. It has intensified in recent days as Russian forces appeared to emerge from a reported "operational pause" after capturing the neighbouring Luhansk region.

A missile struck a residential building in Toretsk early Thursday morning, destroying two floors.

Analysts with the Institute for the Study of War believe that Russian forces are focusing their efforts on capturing the cities of Bakhmut and Siversk in Donetsk province.

"Russian forces have committed enough resources to conduct near-daily ground assaults and to seize territory on these two axes but have been unable to sustain a similar offensive operational tempo or to make similar territorial gains elsewhere in Ukraine," the Institute said.

AP/Reuters