Ukraine power infrastructure devastated by Russian strikes
KYIV, Ukraine — Russia unleashed one of its most devastating attacks against Ukraine’s electric sector Friday, an aerial assault it said was retaliation for recent strikes inside Russia and which could signal an escalation of the war days after President Vladimir Putin cemented his grip on power in a preordained election.
Many Ukrainians were plunged into darkness across several cities, and at least five people were killed.
Russia fired off more than 60 exploding drones and 90 missiles in what Ukrainian officials described as the most brutal attack against its energy infrastructure since the full-scale war began in February 2022.
Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, sustained the most damage, officials said, and the attack came a day after Russia had fired 31 missiles into the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been urging Western allies for weeks to provide it with additional air-defense systems and ammunition, a period in which $60 billion in U.S. aid has been held up by divisions in Congress.
“With Russian missiles, there are no delays, like with aid packages to our state,” Zelenskyy said. “It is important to understand the cost of delays and postponed decisions.”
Russia’s Defense Ministry called Friday attacks “strikes of retribution.”
Ukraine has increased shelling of Russia’s Belgorod region along its northeast border and has launched drone strikes targeting Russian oil refineries and other energy facilities.
Ukraine’s latest strike inside Russia on Friday killed one and injured at least three, local officials said.
Russia has made progress on the battlefield in recent months against Ukrainian troops struggling with a shortage of manpower and ammunition along the front line that stretches over 620 miles.
When Putin invaded in 2022, he called it a “special military operation,” and his officials have mostly eschewed the word “war.” But in a change of rhetoric Friday that may herald a new escalation, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a Russian newspaper that “when the collective West became a participant in this on the side of Ukraine, for us it already became a war.”
While launching the strikes, Russia has combined sophisticated ballistic and cruise missiles with waves of cheap Iranian-made Shahed drones in a bid to oversaturate and weaken Ukrainian air defenses.
The Dnipro hydroelectric power plant, Ukraine’s largest, halted operation after sustaining at least six missile hits that caused massive damage. The plant supplies electricity to the nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhia.
Power to the nuclear plant was lost for several hours before it was restored, International Atomic Energy Agency head Rafael Grossi said Friday.
The plant has been occupied by Russian troops since early in the invasion, and fighting around it has raised the risk of a nuclear accident.