Two explosions could be heard in the city of Khmelnytskyi, which lies 274km west of Kyiv, the regional governor said.

Shortly after air raid alerts were issued nationwide this morning, authorities in several southern and eastern regions of Ukraine warned of possible precautionary power outages to limit damage to the grid in case of a strike.

Russia, which invaded its neighbour nearly a year ago, has been targeting Ukraine’s energy networks with massed missile salvos since last October.

Vitaliy Kim, the governor of the southern region of Mykolaiv, posted a picture on the Telegram messaging app of what appeared to be missile debris lying in a field.

He said it was likely to be part of a Ukrainian air defence missile, and indicated that at least one Russian missile had been shot down.

“Let’s say this – the score for shot down missiles has been opened,” he wrote in the Telegram post.