Russia strikes Ukraine’s battered energy system
KYIV: Ukraine on Wednesday said it was limiting power supplies across the country and warned of possible blackouts after a “massive” wave of Russian missiles and drones targeted the country’s battered energy system.
Moscow also said its forces had taken control of two more frontline villages, as it ups its attacks on land and from the skies with Ukrainian troops struggling more than two years into the war.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called Russia’s attack “deliberate, calculated and sneaky”. “Almost 60 missiles and more than 20 ‘Shahed’ drones targeting life-supporting civilian infrastructure. Not a single military target. Life itself was the target overnight, as it has been for hundreds of other similar days in this war,” he said in a social media post.
The intensified strikes on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure triggered fresh warnings of blackouts as state power operator Ukrenergo said it was limiting supplies.
Meanwhile, Russia said on
Wednesday its forces had captured two more frontline villages in Ukraine, including in the northeast Kharkiv region from where it was forced to retreat in 2022. Russian army units “liberated the village of Kyslivka in the Kharkiv region” and Novokalynove in the eastern Donetsk region, the defence ministry said. Moscow has notched up a number of territorial gains since seizing Avdiivka as it presses an advantage in manpower and ammunition on the battlefield.
Kyiv says the arrival of longdelayed US military supplies will help it stabilise the situation on the front lines. Ukrainian lawmakers on Wednesday approved a controversial bill that — if signed by Zelensky — will allow prisoners to fight, the latest move to try to boost the ranks of its stretched army. In the southern frontline region of Kherson, Russian shelling overnight killed a 65-year-old woman, the regional Ukrainian prosecutor’s office said.