Ukraine has vowed to mount a huge counterattack after Russia launched its worst missile barrage in two months, killing at least 25 civilians.

Kyiv is planning to drive Russia out of the nearly one fifth of Ukraine that it occupies and claims to have annexed.

Defence minister Oleskii Reznikov said his country was ready with new, modern weapons and hundreds of tanks sent by western allies.

‘As soon as there is God’s will, the weather and a decision by commanders, we will do it,’ he added.

The country is devastated after Russia launched a huge onslaught on Ukrainian cities while people were asleep on Thursday night.

At least five children, including a two-year-old, were recorded among the dead on Friday.

The majority of those who lost their lives did so in the central town of Uman, where a residential apartment building was struck on an upper floor by a Russian missile.

Survivor Serhii Lubivskyi, 58, mask was seen sobbing as he watched a body being carried away on a stretcher and a woman came to comfort him.

He was in his flat on the seventh floor before he was rescued by firefighters from the balcony where he escaped with his wife because the explosion had blocked their front door.

He wept as when he said: ‘My neighbours are gone. No one is left. Only the kitchens were left standing.’

The wave of Russian missile attacks overnight was the first since early March.

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Russia had launched such attacks almost weekly for most of the winter, but they tapered off as spring arrived, with western countries saying Moscow was running out of missiles.

Moscow said the targets of its overnight strikes were locations of Ukrainian reserve troops, which it had struck successfully, preventing them from reaching the front.

In the southeastern city of Dnipro, a missile struck a house, killing a two-year-old child and a 31-year-old woman.

The capital Kyiv was also rocked by explosions in the early hours, as were the central cities of Kremenchuk and Poltava, and Mykolaiv in the south. Two people were wounded in the town of Ukrayinka just south of Kyiv.

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