Ukraine suffered a new Russian attack against its energy infrastructure early Saturday, leaving two people dead and causing power outages in several regions.
The Russian army, well on its way to seizing the important logistics hub of Pokrovsk in the east, is also intensifying its bombing of gas and electricity facilities throughout the country. A strategy that raises fears of a difficult winter for Ukrainians for another year.
“Russian attacks have once again targeted the daily lives of the population. They deprive people of electricity, water and heat, have destroyed essential infrastructure and damaged railway networks,” declared Foreign Minister Andrii Sibiga.
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Russia launched 458 drones and 45 missiles at Ukraine, according to the Ukrainian Air Force, which said it shot down 406 drones and nine missiles.
In Dnipro, a large eastern city, a drone attack destroyed a nine-story building. Two people died and six had to be hospitalized, according to Prime Minister Yulia Sviridenko. The previous balance sheet reported one death.
The attacks caused power outages and some disruptions to water supplies in Kharkiv, in the northeast of the country, where the mayor announced a “notable electricity shortage.”
There were also water, electricity and heating outages in the city of Kremenchuk, Poltava region, according to the local administration.
There are also significant delays in the railway networks, warned the Minister of Reconstruction, Oleksii Kuleba, who accused Russia of having intensified its attacks against locomotive depots.
Drones attacked energy infrastructure in southern Ukraine, in Odessa, on Friday night, the region’s governor, Oleg Kiper, reported on Telegram.
For its part, the Russian Defense Ministry claimed to have attacked “enterprises of the Ukrainian military-industrial complex and gas and energy facilities that support their operations.”
Since the start of its invasion in February 2022, Russia has bombed Ukrainian cities almost daily. Their attacks have caused countless damages to power plants and gas infrastructure.
According to a report published in October by the kyiv School of Economics (KSE), more than 25% of electricity demand will remain unmet this winter. Additionally, half of the country’s natural gas production capacity is out of service.
Ukrainians reply
The Ukrainians respond with attacks on Russian territory, increasingly further away. Their goal is to disrupt Russian oil exports, thereby sabotaging the financing of the Russian war machine.
Early this Saturday, the governor of the Russian region of Volgograd, Andrei Bocharov, hundreds of kilometers from the front, reported a drone attack against energy infrastructure, which also caused supply outages.
With diplomatic negotiations stalled, the bulk of the fighting is currently concentrated in the eastern region of Donetsk, where the city of Pokrovsk is located, an important logistical hub for Ukrainian forces, which could fall in the coming days.
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The capture of that city would be the greatest Russian victory in Ukraine since the conquest of the strongholds of Vugledar in October 2024 and Avdiivka in February of that year.
The Russian army controls about 20% of Ukrainian territory, including the Crimean peninsula, annexed in 2014, according to AFP analysis of data from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), which works with the Critical Threats Project (CTP).