Russian strikes leave hundreds of thousands without power in Ukraine

Russian strikes on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure left more than 600,000 people without electricity in the Dnipropetrovsk region and nearly 250,000 customers without power in the Kharkiv region on Sunday, Ukrainian officials said. The overnight attacks also cut heating to apartment buildings as temperatures hovered around freezing.

Power company DTEK said an overnight attack damaged important energy facilities in Dnipropetrovsk. Outages affected the Pavlohrad, Samarivskyi, Kamianske and Dnipro districts, as well as the city of Dnipro, according to Al Jazeera. DTEK said crews were working to restore service, but “repairs are being complicated by repeated attacks”.

In northeastern Kharkiv, a Russian drone struck a critical infrastructure facility, Zlatopil Mayor Mykola Baksheyev said. Nearly 250,000 customers in the region lost electricity, according to CBS News. Baksheyev said no casualties had been reported and repair crews were working at the site, though he did not know when power would return.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the nighttime strikes caused “widespread power outages across the country”. In the Zhytomyr region, he said, 140 apartment buildings were left without heating after a Russian strike.

The latest outages followed a massive attack on energy facilities the previous day. Ukraine’s Energy Ministry said that assault left residents in five regions without power and significantly hampered electricity transmission in Kyiv.

Zelenskyy has accused Russia of intensifying strikes ahead of United States-brokered trilateral talks involving Ukraine and Russia in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday, Al Jazeera reported. Russia’s Ministry of Defence said its forces would “continue to carry out strikes against Ukrainian fuel and energy infrastructure facilities” that it says are used to aid the Ukrainian military.

The president also reported another Russian drone attack on Komyshuvakha, a village in the Zaporizhzhia region where Moscow struck an aid distribution centre on Monday. Zelenskyy said the death toll from that earlier attack had risen to 55; emergency services had previously reported 50 deaths.

“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.

The reported strike on the village came as crews continued their search there, while power engineers elsewhere worked to repair energy facilities damaged in the overnight attacks.