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Russian air strikes have destroyed about 30 per cent of Ukraine’s power stations in just one week leaving the country’s energy situation ‘critical’, President Volodymyr Zelensky revealed today.
Bombing raids once again rocked energy facilities in Kyiv and urban centres across the country this morning, causing blackouts and disrupting water supplies, just one day after the capital was peppered with a swarm of suicide drones.
The strikes in the early hours of Tuesday hit Kyiv, Kharkiv in the east, Mykolaiv in the south and central regions of Dnipro and Zhytomyr, where officials said hospitals were running on backup generators.
Drones bombarded Kyiv on Monday, destroying a residential building in the centre and killing five people in what the presidency described as an attack of desperation.
An Iranian-made suicide drone launched by Russia dive-bombs the streets of Kyiv on Monday as the Kremlin steps up its attack on Ukraine’s cities
Flames rise on the streets of Kyiv after a suicide drone dive-bombed the Ukrainian capital
It was the second Monday in a row that Russia launched punitive strikes which military observers have said appear to be Moscow’s response to battlefield losses.
Zelensky described the repeated targeted of energy infrastructure as ‘another kind of Russian terrorist attacks’.
‘Since October 10, 30 percent of Ukraine’s power stations have been destroyed, causing massive blackouts across the country,’ the Ukrainian leader said on Twitter.
He said the attack meant that there was ‘no space left for negotiations with (President Vladimir) Putin’s regime’.
Zhytomyr, located 80 miles west of Kyiv and with a population of 230,000, was completely without power and water early Monday according to the city’s mayor.
President Zelensky, speaking overnight, said Russia ‘doesn’t have any chance on the battlefield and is trying to compensate for its military defeats with terror.
‘They continue to do what they do best – terrorise and kill civilians,’ he added on Telegram. ‘The terrorist state will not change anything with such actions.’
Despite plentiful footage of Iranian suicide drones attacking Ukrainian cities this week, the Kremlin on Tuesday denied knowing anything about them being used.
Many settlements in the Zhytomyr region west of Kyiv and parts of the city of Dnipro in central Ukraine were without electricity, while power was restored to the southern city of Mykolaiv after strikes overnight.
Russia has attacked multiple Ukrainian cities with missiles and drones again, as footage showed a cruise missile being taken out over the capital Kyiv (left and right)
Smoke rises over Kyiv early Tuesday after more Russian drone and missile attacks on the capital overnight, targeting water and energy supplies
‘Now the city is cut off from electricity and water supplies. Hospitals are working on backup power,’ the mayor of Zhytomyr Sergiy Sukhomlyn said in a statement on line.
In the northeast meanwhile, Ukraine’s second-largest city of Kharkiv some 40 kilometres (25 miles) from the border with Russia was hit with eight missiles, the regional governor said.
Kharkiv’s mayor Igor Terekhov said an ‘industrial enterprise’ had been hit.
In Kyiv, meanwhile, the DETK energy provider said its staff were ‘doing their best to restore electricity supply after the destruction of a critical infrastructure facility in Kyiv city.’
‘The situation is critical now across the country because our regions are dependent on one another… it’s necessary for the whole country to prepare for electricity, water and heating outages,’ Kyrylo Tymoshenko, the deputy head of the Ukrainian president’s office, told Ukrainian television.
Russian strikes against civilian targets have stepped up markedly in the last 10 days, following a string of humiliating retreats on the battlefields and an attack which hit the Crimea Bridge – a pet project of Putin’s that symbolised his power.
It appears that, having failed to defeat Kyiv’s army, Moscow is now trying to break the will of Ukrainian people to continue the war – likely in the hopes of pushing Zelensky to accept a peace deal that will favour Russia.
Two explosions rocked an energy facility in the southeastern city of Dnipro, a city of nearly 1 million, causing serious damage, according to Kyrylo Tymoshenko, a Ukrainian presidential aide.
In the southern Ukrainian port of Mykolaiv, a missile slammed into an apartment building killing at least one man, a Reuters witness said, and blasts were heard and smoke seen rising in Kyiv, the capital.
There were also reports of power facilities being targeted in the city of Kharkiv, a city with a pre-war population of 1.43 million people, close to the Russian border.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy accused Russia of terrorising and killing civilians with the air attacks, which came a day after drone strikes on Kyiv and other cities killed at least four people.
‘Ukraine is under fire by the occupiers. They continue to do what they do best – terrorise and kill civilians,’ Zelenskiy wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
‘The terrorist state will not change anything for itself with such actions. It will only confirm its destructive and murderous essence, for which it will certainly be held to account.’
There was no immediate word on how many people had been killed in the strikes.
Russia earlier this month named General Sergei Suvorikin as overall commander of what Moscow calls its ‘special operation’ in Ukraine. Suvorikin served in Syria and Chechnya where Russian forces pounded cities in a scorched earth policy against its foes.
At least one person was killed after Russia used S-300 anti-aircraft missiles to hit the city of Mykolaiv, in southern Ukraine, overnight
A flower market in the city of Mykolaiv was also blown up (pictured), as Zelesnky asked: ‘What were the Russians attacking at these peaceful facilities?’
Nicknamed ‘General Armageddon’ by the Russian media because of his alleged toughness, his appointment was followed by the biggest wave of missile strikes against Ukraine since Moscow invaded on Feb. 24.
Russia carried out its latest strikes on Tuesday after the United States warned it would hold Moscow accountable for any war crimes.
Moscow denies targeting civilians. Its defence ministry has said it is carrying out attacks on military targets and energy infrastructure across Ukraine using high-precision weapons.
In the port city of Mykolaiv, a Reuters witness said they had heard three explosions in the early hours of Tuesday.
A missile had completely destroyed one wing of a building in the downtown area, leaving a massive crater, they said. A fire crew was seen pulling the dead body of a man from the rubble.
‘In Mykolaiv, the enemy destroyed a residential building with S-300 missiles. A person died. There was also a strike at the flower market, the chestnut park. I wonder what the Russian terrorists were fighting against at these absolutely peaceful facilities?’ Zelenskiy said.
The Russian strikes followed advances by Ukrainian forces in the east and south and came after an Oct. 8 blast on a bridge linking mainland Russia to Crimea – the peninsula Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
U.S. President Joe Biden’s press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Monday that the White House ‘strongly condemns Russiaâs missile strikes’ and spoke of Putinâs ‘brutality’.
Putin sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24 in what he called a ‘special operation’ to root out what it calls dangerous nationalists.
Ukrainian forces have mounted stiff resistance, with the help of arms supplied by the United States and its allies, who have also imposed sweeping sanctions on Russia in an effort to force it to withdraw.
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