The Ukrainian energy network, already very fragile, faced on Sunday one of the most significant Russian attacks in recent months, strikes leaving nine dead and around twenty injured across the country, according to the authorities.
These strikes occur at a time when Ukraine, in difficulty on the front, fears losing American support with the imminent return of Donald Trump to the White House.
“A massive combined attack targeted all regions of Ukraine” and targeted “our energy infrastructure,” declared President Volodymyr Zelensky, reporting 120 missiles and 90 drones launched.
It was a “hellish night,” said Ukrainian Air Force spokesman Yuriy Ignat, according to whom anti-aircraft defenses shot down 144 of these targets.
Foreign Minister Andriï Sybiga denounced “one of the largest air attacks” launched by Russia.
The Russian Defense Ministry, for its part, claimed to have hit “all” of its targets in a massive attack against “essential energy infrastructure that supported the Ukrainian military-industrial complex.”
Moscow, by increasing its drone and missile attacks, has already destroyed half of Ukraine’s energy capacity, according to Kyiv.
The Ukrainian energy operator DTEK indicated that some of its thermal power plants had been “seriously damaged”, without causing any casualties among its employees.
Power outages affected the Kyiv regions as well as several areas in the west, south and east, such as Odessa and Dnipropetrovsk.
Power was beginning to be restored by midday in some areas, according to DTEK.
This is the tenth major attack against the Ukrainian energy network since the start of the year, according to the operator Ukrenergo.
Kyiv is urging its Western partners to help rebuild its electricity grid and provide it with more air defense equipment and weapons.
On Sunday, pilots of F-16 fighter jets shot down ten of the targets launched towards Ukraine, welcomed Volodymyr Zelensky. This precious military equipment was delivered this summer to Kyiv after more than two years of waiting.
In total, the human toll during the night and morning reached nine dead and around twenty injured, according to the Ukrainian authorities.
Among them, two Ukrzaliznytsia railway employees were killed and three injured during the bombing of a depot in Nikopol (south), the state-owned company announced.
A woman was killed and two people were injured by a missile attack in the more rarely targeted region of Lviv (west), said the head of the military administration, Maksym Kozytsky.
In the south, two people were killed and a 17-year-old boy injured in Odessa, while a woman was killed by a drone in Kherson, according to local governors. A drone strike killed two women and injured seven people, including two children, in Mykolaiv, according to the emergency situations service.
Several people were also injured in separate attacks in Kyiv, Dnipro (east), and the regions of Poltava (center), Zaporizhia and Kherson (south).
Russian missiles and drones have even reached Transcarpathia, a very rarely targeted region in the far west of the country, far from the front and bordering Poland and Hungary.
The Polish army announced on Sunday that it had taken off fighter planes and mobilized forces to defend its territory, a usual procedure in the event of danger near its borders.
Putin’s “response”
Ukrainian Minister Andriï Sybiga considered that the attacks constituted the “real response” of Russian President Vladimir Putin to the leaders who “called or visited him” in recent times.
Kyiv was annoyed on Friday by a telephone call between German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Vladimir Putin, the first since December 2022.
At the end of October, the Russian president also gathered world leaders around him in Russia, notably United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres, for the Brics summit.
At the same time, Donald Trump’s recent victory in the American presidential election has reignited the debate on negotiations between Moscow and Kyiv.
On Saturday, Volodymyr Zelensky, who has long rejected this option, said he wanted to achieve an end to the war in his country in 2025 by “diplomatic means”.
The Russian and Ukrainian positions nevertheless remain opposed: Kyiv excludes the cession of territories occupied by the Russian army, while Moscow sets it as a condition.
On the Russian side, Ukrainian attacks killed two people in the border regions of Belgorod and Kursk, according to local authorities.
