Zelensky reports ‘massive’ attack on energy infrastructure

This Sunday, Ukraine was hit by a massive attack targeting its vulnerable energy network, leaving at least nine dead and around twenty injured, according to authorities

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.”

Vulnerable infrastructure

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.

A bloody weekend

This Sunday, pilots of F-16 fighter planes 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.

AFP

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