Kyiv: Russian drone strikes temporarily knocked out power to the entire southern Zaporizhzhia region of Ukraine and left more than 6,00,000 households in the central Dnipropetrovsk region without electricity, officials said Thursday.
The bombardment occurred against the backdrop of US-led diplomatic efforts to stop the fighting, nearly four years after Russia invaded its neighbour.
Ukraine and its Western allies have been working to establish a framework for a peace settlement, but Moscow has given no public sign it is willing to compromise.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy chided Russia for aiming at public services in the nighttime attack.
“There is no military rationale for such strikes on energy facilities and infrastructure that leave people without electricity and heating in winter conditions,” Zelenskyy said on social media.
Russia has repeatedly targeted Ukraine’s power grid since it invaded, denying civilians heat and running water in a strategy Ukrainian officials call “weaponising winter.”
The Zaporizhzhia region, which before the war had a population of around 1.5 million, was left without power for four hours for the first time since the invasion.