More than a million households were left without power in Ukraine after a widespread Russian aerial attack targeted critical energy infrastructure facilities, authorities in the country said Thursday.
This is Russia’s 11th large-scale assault on Ukraine’s energy supplies this year alone, according to the energy ministry in Kyiv, a strategy which has caused nationwide rolling blackouts. Bombardments have intensified in recent months, leaving Ukraine in a precarious position as the war grinds into its third winter.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that the bombardment was a response to Ukraine’s strikes on Russian territory using US-made ATACMS missiles. “As I have said many times, there will always be a response from our side,” Putin said during comments made at a security summit in Kazakhstan.
Ukraine’s energy system came “under massive enemy attack,” overnight, Energy Minister German Halushchenko said Thursday, adding the attacks took place “all over Ukraine.”
In the immediate aftermath, Ukraine’s energy operator introduced emergency power cuts in many regions, with large outages in the western regions of Lviv, Volyn and Rivne. It has since shifted back to implementing scheduled hourly power cuts.
At least five people were injured, including one person in the central Vinnytsia region, two in the southern Odesa region, and two in the capital Kyiv, officials said. In the city of Kharkiv, a missile struck a civilian business, according to local military authorities.
Air defenses were activated across the country, with damage reported in 14 regions, according to the Interior Ministry. In the capital Kyiv, residents took shelter in metro stations as the air raid alert lasted for more than nine hours, due to the combined missile and drone attack. There were no immediate reports of casualties there, authorities said.
“This morning I heard about three explosions,” Valeriy Dorotiy, a resident of Lutsk, in western Ukraine’s Volyn region, told CNN. He said he couldn’t tell if the blasts were from missiles or Ukrainian air defense interceptions. “After that, the power went out.”
About 215,000 households in the Volyn region were temporarily without power, authorities said earlier.
“I have a power bank for charging my phone, but I did not buy a more powerful station because I did not take it seriously that there would be such attacks and that missiles would reach us,” Dorotiy said, adding that it seemed Russia was concentrating on attacking eastern Ukraine instead. “But it did reach us.”
Kyiv resident Olha Vaynrikh, 32, told Reuters, “Our mornings begin with checking the phone to see if there is an air alert… We are indeed fed up with all of it.”
Roman Turiy, a resident of the western city of Ivano-Frankivsk, told CNN that air raid sirens started at 6 a.m. local time in his area. “Many missiles of the second wave were already flying towards our region. Around 8:17 a.m., I heard a very loud explosion over Ivano-Frankivsk… I also heard explosions further away in the region.”
Several critical infrastructure facilities had been attacked, he later discovered.
“I expected to be without power for three hours, but according to the new schedule, it looks like we will be without electricity for eight hours today,” Turiy said. “We all understand that every winter is getting harder.”
The onslaught involved about 100 drones and more than 90 missiles, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
This comes after Russia launched a record 188 drones at Ukraine on Tuesday in a mass attack that damaged critical infrastructure in the west of the country, according to the Ukrainian Air Force.
“Every attack like this proves that air defense systems are needed in Ukraine now, where they save lives, not at storage bases,” Zelensky added, urging allies to help his country increase its air defense capabilities.
Putin claimed Russia hit 17 targets on Thursday that were “military facilities, defense industry facilities and their support systems.”
“We will respond to the ongoing strikes on Russian territory by Western-made long-range missiles, including the possible continuation of the Oreshnik test in combat conditions,” he added. This referred to Russia’s launch of a new non-nuclear ballistic missile with medium range, called the ‘Oreshnik,’ on Ukraine’s Dnipro region last week.
Putin also said last week that Moscow considers itself entitled to use weapons against military targets belonging to countries that allow their weapons to be used against Russia. He said that Ukrainian Armed Forces attacked targets in Russia’s Bryansk region with six US-made ATACMS missiles on Tuesday and later fired British/French Storm Shadow systems on the Kursk region.
This is a developing story and will be updated.