(Kyiv) The Ukrainian energy network, already very fragile, faced on Sunday one of the most significant Russian attacks in recent months, strikes leaving 10 dead and around twenty injured across the country, according to the authorities.
Posted at 7:49 a.m.
Updated at 10:00 a.m.
Stanislav DOSHCHITSYN et Sergii VOLSKYI
Agence France-Presse
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.
They also arrive two days after a call between German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Russian President Vladimir Putin, a resumption of contact deemed dangerous by Kyiv.
“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 spokesperson Yurii Ignat, according to whom anti-aircraft defenses shot down 144 of these targets.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, 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 during a massive attack against “essential energy infrastructure”.
Moscow, by increasing its drone and missile attacks, has already destroyed half of Ukraine’s energy capacity, according to Kyiv.
Ukrainian energy operator DTEK said some of its thermal power plants were “seriously damaged” on Sunday.
Power outages affected the Kyiv region 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.
PHOTO SERGEI SUPINSKY, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
A crane removes a large fragment from a downed Russian Zircon hypersonic missile, after it hit a five-story residential building in Kyiv in a “massive” air barrage, November 17, 2024
This is the tenth major attack against the Ukrainian energy network since the start of the year, according to the operator Ukrenergo.
Polish planes
In total, the human toll of the night and day reached ten 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 Ukrenergo employees were killed in the Odessa region, operator DTEK announced.
PHOTO UKRAINIAN EMERGENCY SERVICES, PROVIDED BY AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
In this photograph published by Ukrainian emergency services on November 17, 2024, a doctor provides assistance to a resident injured following a drone attack in Mykolaiv.
One of them had served in the Ukrainian army at the start of the invasion, before being demobilized in the spring of 2023 and returning to his job as an electrician, according to the same source.
Two people were killed in Kherson, and two others in Mykolaiv, other southern cities, according to local authorities.
Several people were also injured in separate attacks in Kyiv, Dnipro (east), and in 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.
On the Russian side, a local journalist, Yulia Kouznetsova, was killed by a Ukrainian drone attack in the Kursk region, according to Governor Alexei Smirnov.
This region was attacked at the beginning of August by the Ukrainian army, which still controls a small part of it.
A civilian was killed by a Ukrainian drone in the Russian region of Belgorod, also bordering Ukraine, according to its governor Vyacheslav Gladkov.
Putin’s “response”
Kyiv is urging its Western partners to help rebuild its electricity grid and provide it with more air defense equipment and weapons.
But Donald Trump’s victory in the American presidential election is relaunching the debate on possible negotiations, and Kyiv fears being forced into concessions.
Ukraine was annoyed on Friday by a telephone call between Olaf Scholz and Vladimir Putin, the first since December 2022, with President Zelensky accusing the German chancellor of having opened “Pandora’s box”.
The latter reaffirmed his support for Ukraine on Sunday and assured that “no decision” would be taken without it.
Ukrainian Minister Andriï Sybiga considered that Sunday’s attacks constituted Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “real response” to the leaders who “called or visited” him in recent times.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said the strikes proved that no phone call could “replace real support from the whole of the West”.
Volodymyr Zelensky, who has long dismissed the idea of talks, said on Saturday that 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.
