Russia strikes Ukraine energy grid, killing six
Russia attacked Ukraine’s energy infrastructure with drones and missiles, imposed nationwide electricity restrictions and killed six people, including a seven-year-old girl.
Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko accused Moscow of targeting Ukrainian people and energy resources as the cold winter months approach.
“His goal is to plunge Ukraine into darkness. Our goal is to preserve the light,” Svyrydenko wrote on Telegram on Thursday. he said.
“To stop terrorism, we need more air defense systems, tougher sanctions and maximum pressure on the aggressor.”
Two men were killed overnight in the southeastern industrial city of Zaporizhia, and a seven-year-old girl from the central Vinnystia region died in hospital from injuries sustained in the attacks, regional officials said.
In his video speech at night, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that two people were killed and many people were injured in a bomb attack on a thermal power plant in Sloviansk in the eastern Donetsk region.
Prosecutors in the Donetsk region said that one person died and three people were injured in attacks on residential buildings in the Russian city of Kramatorsk.
Sloviansk and Kramatorsk are seen as key future targets in the slow advance of Russian troops westwards through the Donetsk region. Russia’s defense ministry said its forces launched an attack on facilities of the Ukrainian military-industrial complex overnight. Moscow denies targeting civilians and says its attacks are a response to Ukrainian attacks on Russian infrastructure.
Ukraine has launched regular drone attacks on its military and oil fields as it struggles with Russia’s almost four-year occupation.
Zelenskiy said Russia launched more than 650 unmanned aerial vehicles and more than 50 missiles in the attacks.
In his speech, he said that most of the unmanned aerial vehicles were neutralized and two-thirds of the missiles were shot down.
The air force said its air defense units shot down 592 drones and 31 missiles.
Ukrainian officials said the attacks targeted energy facilities in the central, western and southeastern regions. The government has announced nationwide restrictions on the supply of electricity to retail and industrial consumers. Water supply and heating were also disrupted in some areas. Two energy facilities in the western Lviv region were damaged, regional officials said. Ukraine’s largest private energy company, DTEK, said its thermal power plants in many regions are under attack.
“This attack is a devastating blow to our efforts to keep power flowing this winter,” said DTEK CEO Maxim Timchenko.
“Looking at the intensity of attacks in the last two months, it is clear that Russia aims to completely destroy Ukraine’s energy system.”
The governor said that six children were among the 17 people injured in the attacks on Zaporozhye. Authorities said four people were injured in the Vinnystia area.
Air alerts lasted almost all night in Kiev, where residents took shelter in underground metro stations.
“There’s nothing good about it. We’re doing our best to hide,” Viktoria, 39, the mother of a six-year-old boy, told Reuters at a subway station.
“There’s a lot of stress. When you wake your child up in the middle of the night, he cries because he doesn’t understand why he has to do that.”
