Ukrainian strikes disrupt power, heating to 2 major cities in Russia

Kyiv: Ukrainian strikes disrupted power and heating to two major Russian cities near the Ukrainian border, local Russian officials reported Sunday.

The report comes as Russia and Ukraine have traded almost daily assaults on each other’s energy infrastructure, and US-led diplomatic efforts to stop the nearly four-year war have not advanced.

Elsewhere, Ukraine’s top diplomat accused Moscow of deliberately endangering nuclear safety, as he said Russia’s mass drone and missile attack on Friday struck substations that power two nuclear power plants.

A drone strike temporarily caused blackouts and cut heating to parts of Voronezh, regional Gov. Alexander Gusev said.

He said several drones were electronically jammed during the night over the city, home to just over 1 million people, sparking a fire at a local utility facility that was quickly extinguished.

Russian and Ukrainian news channels on Telegram claimed the strike targeted a local thermal power plant.

A missile strike late on Saturday also caused “serious damage” to power and heating systems supplying the city of Belgorod, with some 20,000 households

affected, local Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov reported the following morning. Belgorod had a population of some 340,000 people at the last census in 2021, and is the administrative centre of a region of the

same name.