Russia targeted energy infrastructure in large-scale nighttime attack across Ukraine; 5 deaths have been confirmed
Air raid sirens sounded across the country overnight as Russian drones and missiles were launched from various locations.
Ukraine has faced many similar attacks, but this was the largest coordinated attack since early September.
Russia launched around 120 missiles and 90 drones in a “massive combined attack against all regions of Ukraine”, President Volodymyr Zelensky said.
In a post on Telegram, Zelensky said that Moscow was targeting his country’s energy infrastructure. He said some areas were already without electricity and that work to restore it was underway.
The Ukrainian president reported that Ukraine’s air defenses destroyed more than 140 targets. In support of the country, Poland announced that it had activated its air force, underlining the mobilization of Polish aircraft to defend the attack.
In the south of the country, the city of Mykolaiv was one of the hardest hit, with at least two dead and several injured. In Dnipropetrovsk, two railway workers were killed after Russian air strikes on the railways.
The death of an elderly woman in Lviv, western Ukraine, has also been confirmed. She was in her car at the time of the attack and was killed by fragments of a Russian rocket.
Further south, Odessa also had two fatalities and the entire city suffered a blackout.
And in the capital Kiev, fragments of missiles and intercepted drones fell in several places, but there were no reports of injuries. The capital is among three regions affected by power outages.
The consequences for infrastructure
Ukraine’s largest private energy company said recent Russian missile and drone attacks have caused “significant damage” to its thermal power plants (plants that generate electricity using heat sources such as gas or coal), in a statement released today morning.
DTEK said this was the eighth major attack on its energy facilities this year.
The company said its thermal plants have been the target of more than 190 attacks since the full-scale invasion of Russia began in February 2022.
Ukrainian authorities fear attacks like this morning’s could mark the start of another coordinated Russian offensive to disable key elements of the electricity grid as winter approaches.
The last major attack on energy infrastructure occurred at the end of August. Ukraine currently operates at about a third to half of its energy production capacity ahead of 2022. The exact number is officially confidential.
Source: Terra
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