Power cuts as Russian missiles pound Ukraine’s energy grid

The strikes come at a time where Ukraine has been on the retreat against Russia’s soldiers – Copyright UKRAINIAN EMERGENCY SERVICE/AFP Handout

Sergii VOLSKYI, Stanislav DOSHCHITSYN

Russia on Sunday pummelled Ukraine with a “massive” aerial barrage, Ukrainian officials said, killing at least eight people and forcing power cuts with fears of a precarious winter to come.

Hundreds of missiles and drones streaked across Kyiv’s skies as Russia’s invasion dragged past its one thousandth day, leaving more than 20 people wounded as well as the dead and damaging the country’s already beleaguered energy grid.

The strikes came with Ukraine on the retreat against Russia’s soldiers and the support of its main backer the United States thrown into question by the reelection of Donald Trump to the presidency.

Ukraine’s energy operator DTEK on Sunday announced emergency power cuts in the Kyiv region and two regions in the east.

Earlier, Ukraine’s Energy Minister German Galushchenko said on Telegram that Russian forces were “attacking electricity generation and transmission facilities throughout Ukraine”.

AFP journalists heard explosions in the early morning in Kyiv and close to Sloviansk in the Donetsk region, with Kyiv’s Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiga calling the strikes “one of the largest air attacks” of the conflict.

Russia’s defence ministry said it had hit all its targets in a massive attack on “essential energy infrastructure supporting the Ukrainian military-industrial complex”.

Russia’s relentless aerial bombardment has destroyed half of Ukraine’s energy production capacity, President Volodymyr Zelensky has said.

Moscow fired 120 missiles and 90 drones at Ukraine, of which 140 were shot down by Kyiv’s air defences, Zelensky said on Sunday.

– Winter freeze near –

With the harsh Ukrainian winter fast approaching, the country is already suffering from major energy shortfalls, while its outmanned and outgunned forces have been steadily ceding ground to the Kremlin’s troops for weeks.

Kyiv has implored its Western allies for help to rebuild its energy grid — a hugely expensive undertaking — and to supply its outgunned forces with more aerial defence weapons.

But many in Ukraine fear that Western help will not be as freely given following the imminent return of Trump to the White House in January.

The Republican president-elect has frequently questioned the United States’ backing for Ukraine, and campaigned with the promise of cutting a quick deal to end the war.

Besides the capital Kyiv’s region, DTEK also announced power cuts in the Donetsk and Dnipropetrovsk regions in the east, where Russia’s army has claimed the capture of dozens of villages in recent weeks.

Power was also cut off in parts of the southern Black Sea port city of Odesa, its mayor said, while officials warned essential infrastructure was affected in almost all parts of the country with the west and south particularly hard-hit.

Although the extent of the damage is difficult to estimate at present, the grid operator said that this was the eighth major attack on its power stations this year.

– Poland scrambles jets –

In total, the overnight Russian strikes left at least eight people dead and wounded around 20 more, according to Ukrainian officials.

The toll included two employees of the state railway company Ukrzaliznytsia in the city of Nikopol, who were killed when a depot was hit, the Dnipropetrovsk region’s governor Sergiy Lysak and the operator said. Three more people were wounded in the bombing.

Odesa governor Oleg Kiper said strikes on the port city likewise killed two.

A Russian drone strike killed two people and injured six others, including two children, in the southern Mykolaiv region, according to Ukraine’s emergency services.

In the western Lviv region, relatively spared from the conflict, a cruise missile strike killed a 66-year-old woman and wounded two others, said military administration chief Makdym Kozytsky.

Several people were also injured in separate attacks in Dnipro in the east, the central Poltava as well as the southern Zaporizhzhia, Odesa and Kherson regions.

Russian missiles and drones even struck Transcarpathia, a very rarely targeted western region far from the front line on the border with Poland and Hungary, without causing any casualties.

That prompted neighbouring Poland to scramble fighter jets and mobilise all available forces on Sunday in response.

Warsaw puts its armed forces on alert whenever attacks against its neighbouring country are deemed likely to create a danger for its own territory.

– ‘Diplomatic means’ –

Top diplomat Sybiga branded the barrage as Russia’s “real response” to Western leaders who had sought to reach out to President Vladimir Putin.

Kyiv was riled by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz initiating a call with Putin on Friday despite Ukraine’s objections, in what was the Russian leader’s first phone conversation with a major Western leader in nearly two years.

Ukraine accused Scholz of an “attempt at appeasement” and said the call would not achieve anything other than minimise Putin’s “isolation”. 

Having repeatedly promised to end the Ukraine war in a day, Trump’s reelection has reignited debate over the prospect of a diplomatic solution to the conflict.

After long dismissing the prospect of talks, Zelensky on Saturday said he wanted to bring an end to the war by “diplomatic means” next year.

Yet Kyiv and the Kremlin remain at odds over the terms of any peace deal.

Putin has said he will only accept talks with Ukraine if Kyiv surrenders Ukrainian territory that Moscow occupies.

Zelensky has rejected Putin’s conditions.