Russian strikes on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure have left hundreds of thousands of people without electricity, with outages reported in the Dnipropetrovsk and Kharkiv regions.
More than 600,000 residents in Dnipropetrovsk were without power after an overnight attack damaged what energy company DTEK described as important facilities. The company said restoration work had begun but was being hindered by repeated attacks.
In the Kharkiv region, a Russian drone struck “a critical infrastructure facility”, according to Mykola Baksheyev, mayor of the city of Zlatopil. He said nearly 250,000 customers had lost power.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the strikes had caused “widespread power outages across the country”. In the Zhytomyr region, 140 apartment buildings were left without heating after a Russian strike, he added, as temperatures hovered around freezing.
The latest attacks came a day after Ukraine’s energy ministry said a major assault on energy facilities had plunged residents in five regions into darkness and severely disrupted electricity transmission in Kyiv.
A separate wave of attacks caused a power outage in central Kyiv on November 7.
Zelenskyy also said Russia had launched a drone at Komyshuvakha, a village in the Zaporizhzhia region where an aid distribution centre was hit on Monday.
The death toll from that attack has risen to 55, according to the Ukrainian president. Emergency services had previously reported that 50 people were killed.
“This morning, the Russians attacked Komyshuvakha with an FPV drone, where emergency rescue operations have been underway for seven days … Unfortunately, more people may still be under the rubble,” Zelenskyy said.
