Russian Strikes Leave More Than 850,000 People Without Power in Ukraine

More than 850,000 people across Ukraine have been left without electricity following overnight Russian strikes targeting the country’s energy infrastructure, with the eastern Dnipropetrovsk region among the hardest hit.

Ukrainian energy company DTEK said Russian forces carried out a major attack on key power facilities in the region, cutting electricity to more than 600,000 people in Pavlohrad, Samar, Kamianske and Dnipro. Power supplies have since begun to be gradually restored.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said electricity supplies were also disrupted in several other regions, including Kharkiv in the northeast and Zhytomyr in the northwest. In Zhytomyr, the strikes left 140 apartment buildings without electricity. Around 250,000 consumers in the Kharkiv region also lost power, although supplies have since been restored.

Russia has stepped up attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure as winter approaches. Zelenskyy said Russian forces had launched 115 missiles, nearly 1,900 guided bombs and more than 3,000 attack drones against Ukraine over the past week.

Meanwhile, Russia launched another drone strike on Sunday morning at a site in Komyshuvakha, in the Zaporizhzhia region, where rescue workers had been searching through the rubble following an earlier attack. At least 55 people were killed in Monday’s bombing, and Zelenskyy warned that more people could still be trapped beneath the debris.

Ukraine’s emergency services said the rescue workers were deliberately targeted in the latest strike, but no casualties were reported among them.

In a separate attack on a residential area in the city of Dnipro on Sunday, one person was killed and three others injured. A house was destroyed, and authorities fear more people may be trapped beneath the rubble.

Zelenskyy accused Moscow of intensifying its attacks to increase pressure on Ukraine ahead of possible trilateral talks involving Ukraine, Russia and the United States in Abu Dhabi.

Sources: Euronews and AP