Ukraine warns situation ‘critical’ after Russia attacks power grid
KYIV, Ukraine (AFP)— Ukraine warned Tuesday of an emerging “critical” risk to its power grid after President Volodymyr Zelensky said that repeated Russian bombardments had destroyed one-third of the country’s power facilities as winter approaches.
That warning came as Russian forces claimed to have retaken territory from Ukrainian troops in the eastern Kharkiv region, Moscow’s first announced capture of a village there since being nearly entirely pushed out of the region last month.
At the same time, Russian attacks rocked energy facilities in Kyiv and urban centres across the country, causing blackouts and disrupting water supplies, just one day after the capital was bombarded with a swarm of suicide drones.
“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.
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 also bombarded Kyiv on Monday leaving five dead, officials said, in what the presidency described as an attack of desperation.
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 targeting of energy infrastructure as “another kind of Russian terrorist attacks”.
“Since October 10, 30 per cent 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”.
Many towns and cities 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.
“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 online.
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.
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 mayor Vitali Klitschko said three people had been killed in Tuesday’s strikes.
Zelensky earlier said the fresh wave of nationwide strikes — which he said had damaged a residential building and flower market in Mykolaiv — was a Russian attempt to “terrorise and kill civilians.”