Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
Blackouts announced for Kyiv, other regions
Energy infrastructure endure Russian strikes
KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine’s state electricity operator on Saturday announced blackouts in Kyiv and seven other regions of the country in the aftermath of Russia’s devastating strikes on energy infrastructure.
The move comes as Russian forces continue to pound Ukrainian cities and villages with missiles and drones, inflicting damage on power plants, water supplies and other civilian targets, in a grinding war that is nearing its nine-month mark.
Russia has denied that the drones it has used in Ukraine came from Iran, but the Islamic Republic’s foreign minister on Saturday for the first time acknowledged supplying Moscow with “a limited number” of drones before the invasion. Hossein Amirabdollahian claimed, however, that Tehran didn’t know if its drones were used against Ukraine and stated Iran’s commitment to stopping the conflict.
Ukrenergo, the sole operator of Ukraine’s high-voltage transmission lines, initially said in a an online statement Saturday that scheduled blackouts will take place in the capital and the greater Kyiv region, as well as several regions around it — Chernihiv, Cherkasy, Zhytomyr, Sumy, Poltava and Kharkiv.
Later in the day, however, the company released an update saying that scheduled outages for a specific number of hours aren’t enough and instead there will be emergency outages, which could last an indefinite amount of time.
Ukraine has been grappling with power outages and disruption of water supplies since Russia started unleashing massive barrages of missile and drone strikes on the country’s energy infrastructure last month.
Moscow has said those came in response to what it alleged were Ukrainian attacks on Crimea, the region that Russia illegally annexed in 2014. Ukraine has denied those allegations.
According to Ukraine’s presidential office, at least three civilians were killed and eight others were wounded over the past 24 hours by Russian shelling of nine Ukrainian regions, where drones, missiles and heavy artillery were used.
Meanwhile, Russian shelling of Ukrainian regions continued into the early hours of Saturday.
About 40 shells were fired overnight at the city of Nikopol, Dnipropetrovsk Gov. Valentyn Reznichenko said on Telegram. The Russian forces targeted the city and the areas around it from heavy artillery. Two fires broke out, and more than a dozen of residential and utility buildings, as well as a gas pipeline, were damaged, the official said.
Elsewhere in the region, the Ukrainian forces shot down a drone and another projectile, according to Reznichenko.
According to Ukraine’s presidential office, at least three civilians were killed and eight others were wounded over the past 24 hours by Russian shelling of nine Ukrainian regions, where drones, missiles and heavy artillery were used.