Russia launched more than 70 missiles and more than 100 explosive drones on Wednesday at Ukraine, targeting its energy system, an attack that caused the death of one person and left, according to kyiv, hundreds of thousands of homes without electricity or heat on Christmas Day.
Russian President Vladimir “Putin consciously chose Christmas for his attack. What could be more inhumane?” launched his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky on Telegram.
“More than 50 missiles” and some drones were shot down but some strikes led to “power cuts in several regions,” he added.
This “terror” is “Putin's response to those who spoke of an illusory 'Christmas ceasefire'” between kyiv and Moscow, asserted the head of Ukrainian diplomacy Andriï Sybiga.
The strikes targeted six Ukrainian regions, leaving at least one dead and six injured and causing widespread heating outages in near-zero temperatures, according to Ukrainian authorities.
In the city of Dnipro, in the center-east of the country, an employee of a thermal power plant was killed, said Deputy Prime Minister Oleksiï Kouleba.
In Kharkiv, Ukraine's second city located in the northeast and very often targeted, half a million homes remained without electricity, heating and tap water, said the governor of this region Oleg Synegoubov. .
At least six people were injured in Kharkiv in these latest attacks, according to Mr. Synegoubov.
The Ukrainian Air Force said it detected 78 Russian missiles and 106 drones, claiming to have shot down 59 and 54 respectively.
Since the start of its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russia has regularly bombed its neighbor's power grid, plunging hundreds of thousands of people, if not millions, into the dark and cold, often in winter temperatures.
On the Russian side, a Ukrainian strike left four dead and several injured on Wednesday in Lgov, a town in the Kursk border region, where Ukraine has been leading an offensive since August, said interim governor Alexander Khinchteïn.
– Celebrate Christmas with the West –
DTEK Group, Ukraine's main private energy supplier, said its thermal power plants were targeted in Wednesday's attack, reporting “serious damage” to their equipment.
“This is already the thirteenth massive attack on Ukraine’s energy system this year,” DTEK said in a statement.
The national electricity company, Ukrenergo, announced supply restrictions.
“The enemy is once again massively attacking the energy sector”, which forces the authorities to take “measures” to reduce consumption, Ukrainian Energy Minister German Galushchenko explained on Telegram.
The cuts even briefly affected the Ivano-Frankivsk region, in the west of the country and hundreds of kilometers from the front line, according to the regional administration.
On Wednesday, one of the Russian missiles crossed Moldovan and Romanian airspace, Sybiga said on the social network X.
Romania, a NATO member, immediately assured that it had not detected a violation of its airspace by a Russian missile.
Wednesday's attacks come on the day when Ukraine, for the second time in its modern history, celebrates Christmas Day on December 25, as in the Western world, and no longer on January 7 which corresponds to December 25 of ancient Julian calendar still followed by the Russian Orthodox Church for religious holidays.
This change was made official during the summer of 2023, in particular to differentiate itself from Russia. Between 2017 and 2022, Ukraine, a predominantly Orthodox country, had already celebrated this holiday on December 25 and January 7.
On Sunday, Vladimir Putin promised even more “destruction” to Ukraine, after a drone attack against residential buildings in the city of Kazan, a thousand kilometers from the Ukrainian border.
Ukraine and Russia have intensified their strikes in recent months and want to do everything to strengthen their positions before Donald Trump's return to the White House in January, the American president-elect having said he wanted to stop “the carnage” as soon as he took office. function.
The Russian army, which has been advancing rapidly in recent months in eastern Ukraine, is trying to further accelerate its march forward.
On Wednesday, the Ministry of Defense claimed responsibility for the capture of the village of Vidrodjennia, very close to Pokrovsk, an important town for the logistics of the Ukrainian army.
