‘Russia launches barrage of 99 drones & missiles on Ukraine’s energy system’

Kyiv: Moscow launched a large-scale attack on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure on Friday, with a mass barrage of 99 drones and missiles hitting regions across the country, Ukraine’s armed forces said.

Air raid warnings rang out across the country, with 10 Ukrainian regions coming under fire, the country’s Interior Minister, Ihor Klymenko, said.

Russia has escalated its attacks on Ukraine in recent days, launching several missile barrages on the capital, Kyiv, and hitting energy infrastructure across the country in apparent retaliation for recent Ukrainian aerial attacks on the Russian border region of Belgorod. Such sporadic attacks, however, have been common throughout the war.

Large-scale blackouts have already affected Ukraine’s eastern city of Kharkiv, where 700,000 people lost power after the city’s thermal power plant was hit in a drone and missile attack on March 22. In the winter of 2022-23, Russia targeted Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, causing frequent blackouts across the country. Many in Ukraine and the West expected that Russia might repeat this strategy this winter, but Russia instead focused its strikes on Ukraine’s defence industries.

Ukraine’s state-owned grid operator, Ukrenergo, said that Friday’s attack deliberately targeted thermal and hydroelectric power plants across central and western regions. DTEK, Ukraine’s largest private electricity operator, also said that three of its thermal power plants had been damaged in the attack. It announced emergency power shutdowns in the city of Odesa, leaving several neighbourhoods without power. Five people, including a 5-year-old girl, were wounded during the attack in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region, said local governor Serhii Lysak.

He later said that another man had been killed and one more injured in a separate drone attack on Friday. Elsewhere, Ukrainian police said that rescuers had recovered the body of a 66-year-old woman from a building in the Mykolaiv region that was hit by a Russian missile on Thursday.