Russian missile and drone strikes hit Ukraine’s power grid on Monday, killing at least four people and forcing officials to implement emergency blackouts.
Officials claimed 15 districts around the country were targeted in the aerial attack, which began overnight and was the largest in weeks.
The strikes come as Ukraine launches a major cross-border offensive into Russia’s Kursk area, where it has been fighting for nearly three weeks and claimed to be advancing on Sunday.
“Russian terrorists have once again attacked energy infrastructure. Unfortunately, there is devastation in several locations,” Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmygal stated.
Ukrenergo, the state-owned energy system operator, was compelled to implement emergency power cuts to stabilise the system after the barrage, while train schedules were delayed.
Explosions from what seemed to be air defenses could be heard in Kyiv early Monday, and inhabitants hurried to metro stations for refuge, according to AFP journalists.
“We’re always worried. “We’ve been under stress for almost three years,” said 34-year-old lawyer Yulia Voloshyna, who was taking refuge in the Kyiv subway.
“It was terrifying, to be honest. “You don’t know what to expect,” she explained.
The Russian defense ministry stated that it had targeted electricity infrastructure used to support Ukraine’s defense sector.
Since its invasion in February 2022, Russia has undertaken a series of large-scale drone and missile operations on Ukraine, including severe attacks on energy infrastructure.
‘Massive rocket fire!’
The attacks on Monday killed four people and injured over a dozen others around the country, according to officials.
Sergiy Lysak, governor of the central Dnipropetrovsk area, claimed Russian forces had assaulted “en masse.”
“There is one dead, a 69-year-old man,” the governor posted on social media.
The strike in southern Zaporizhzhia killed one person, according to local governor Ivan Fedorov.
According to Lutsk mayor Igor Polishchuk, a Russian shelling damaged an apartment complex and an infrastructure site, killing one person and injured five others.
In the central region of Zhytomyr, one person was killed and several others injured, according to authorities.
Russia also attacked railway infrastructure in the northern Sumy region, injuring one person and causing property damage, according to national operator Ukrainian Railways.
“Some railway stations, which were also cut off from power due to the outage in the city’s networks, have been switched to backup generators,” stated a spokesperson.
According to police, the attack targeted energy infrastructure throughout the country, including the southern Odesa area, the larger Kyiv region, and the Lviv region in the west.
“As a result, there are partial power outages in (the city of) Lviv and the region,” governor Maksym Kozytskyi tweeted.
A missile strike on the southern Odesa area wounded four persons, including a 10-year-old boy, according to Governor Oleg Kiper.
“Massive rocket fire” injured three more persons in Mykolaiv, the neighboring southern district, according to governor Vitaliy Kim.
Earlier, an attack on an industrial plant in the eastern region of Poltava injured five persons, according to governor Filip Pronin.
“The enemy is once again terrorizing the entire Ukraine with missiles. “The energy sector is in the crossfire,” energy minister German Galushchenko stated.
Andriy Yermak, chief of staff to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, claimed the raid demonstrated Kyiv’s need for permission to strike “deep into Russian territory with Western weapons.”
Meanwhile, authorities in the eastern Kharkiv region reported that one civilian was killed by Russian rocket fire on Monday morning, but it was unclear whether this was related to the missile and drone barrage.
