Russian strikes on Ukraine power grid kill 4

Russian missile and drone attack on Monday severely damaged Ukraine’s power grid, killing at least four people and forcing authorities to implement emergency power shutdowns.

• The attacks, including drones and missiles, led to power outages and disruptions
• Continued strikes since February 2022 have targeted Ukraine’s energy infrastructure

Officials said the airstrikes targeted 15 regions of the country in the largest airstrikes in recent weeks, which began overnight.

The attack comes as Ukraine launches a major cross-border offensive into Russia’s Kursk region, where Kiev has been fighting for nearly three weeks and claimed to be advancing on Sunday.

“Russian terrorists have again targeted energy infrastructure and, unfortunately, damage has been done in several regions,” Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmygal said. Regional power grid operator Ukrenergo was forced to implement emergency power cuts to stabilise the grid after the shelling, while train services were disrupted.

AFP journalists reported that explosions believed to be from air defence systems were heard early on Monday as residents in the capital, Kiev, took refuge in metro stations.

“We are constantly worried. We have been under stress for almost three years now,” said Yulia Voloshina, a 34-year-old lawyer who took refuge in the Kiev metro.

“Honestly, I was very scared.” “We don’t know what’s going to happen,” she said.

The Russian Defense Ministry said it had attacked energy infrastructure that serves Ukraine’s defense industry.

Since its February 2022 invasion, Russia has repeatedly launched large-scale drone and missile attacks against Ukraine, including punitive strikes on energy facilities.

‘Massive rocket fire’

Officials said Monday’s attacks killed four people and wounded a dozen across the country.

Sergiy Lysak, governor of the central Dnipropetrovsk region, said Russian forces attacked “in unison.”

“One fatality, a 69-year-old man,” the governor said on social media.

In the southern Zaporizhia region, one civilian was killed in the attack, local governor Ivan Fedorov said.

In the western city of Lutsk, Russian shelling damaged homes and infrastructure, killing one person and wounding five, Mayor Igor Polishchuk said.

And in the central Zhytomyr region, authorities said one person was killed and several were wounded. Russia also attacked rail infrastructure in the northern Sumy region, wounding one man and damaging buildings, state-run Ukrainian Railways said.

“Some train stations that lost power due to the blackout in the city network have also switched to emergency generators,” it said.

Authorities said the attacks targeted energy facilities across the country, including in the southern Odessa region, the greater Kyiv region and the Lviv region in the country’s west.

“As a result, there is a partial power outage in Lviv and its regions,” Governor Maksim Kozitskyi said on social media.

Four people, including a 10-year-old boy, were wounded in a rocket attack in the southern Odessa region, Governor Oleg Kipel said. Governor Vitaly Kim said three more people were wounded in a “massive rocket attack” in the neighboring southern region of Mykolaiv.

Earlier, Governor Philip Pronin said five people were wounded in an attack on an industrial plant in the eastern Poltava region.

“The enemy is again terrorizing all of Ukraine with missiles. The energy sector is in their crosshairs,” Energy Minister German Galushchenko said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s chief of staff Andriy Yermak said the attack showed that Kiev needed permission to “penetrate deep into Russian territory with Western weapons.”

Meanwhile, authorities in eastern Kharkiv said a Russian rocket attack killed one resident on Monday morning, but it was not immediately clear if the incident was part of a rocket and drone attack.

Strike on Kramatorsk

The airstrike came after a rocket attack on a hotel in eastern Ukraine killed a Reuters news agency security adviser late Saturday.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said after the attack that “despite all this, the world should not stop pressuring the terrorist state,” referring to Russia’s post-2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Zelenskiy separately announced Sunday that his troops were advancing into Russia’s Kursk region, more than two weeks after Kiev’s surprise invasion.