President Volodymyr Zelensky said nearly one-third of Ukraine’s power stations had been destroyed in the past week, leading to “massive power outages across the country.”
“There is no room left for talks with the Putin regime,” he tweeted.
The campaign of strikes using missiles, drones and other weapons has opened a new phase in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s nearly eight-month offensive as winter begins. Even away from the battlefields, with water, heating and electricity no longer certain, daily strikes reach far and wide across the country to slam utilities, sometimes faster than repairing them. Is.
The latest city to lose power and water was Zhytomyr, home to military bases, industries, leafy boulevards and about 250,000 people about 140 kilometers (85 mi) west of the capital Kyiv.
City and regional officials said hospitals in Zhytomyr had to run on backup power after a dual missile attack on Tuesday targeted an energy facility and power went out to other settlements in the region.
In Kyiv, missile strikes damaged two power facilities, Mayor Vitaly Klitschko said. He said one person was killed and six others were injured in the attacks.
Along with missiles, Russia is mixing up its attack modalities.
The regional governor said suicide drones – so-called because they hit and detonate into targets – partially set fire to an infrastructure facility in the Russian-occupied southern Zaporizhzhya region.
Air-defense S-300 missiles, which Russia is using as ground attack weapons as its stocks are running out, were used to strike the southern city of Mykolaiv, killing one person Whose body was found in the rubble of a two-storey building. said the governor of the region.
In the eastern city of Kharkiv, rockets were used to hit an industrial area. The regional governor said eight rockets were fired from across the border with Russia.
Waves of suicide drones laden with explosives also ravaged Kyiv on Monday, damaging power plants and setting fire to buildings and partially collapsing buildings. A drone crashed into a four-storey residential building, killing four people.
Ukraine says Russia is getting thousands of drones from Iran. The Iranian-made Martyr drone, which nose-dives with its explosive charges in Kyiv on Monday, has been widely used elsewhere in recent weeks.
Ukraine’s foreign ministry said that in the past week alone, more than 100 drones had struck power plants, sewage treatment plants, residential buildings, bridges and other targets in urban areas.
Zelensky said in a televised address Monday night that Russia is using kamikaze drones because it is losing ground in the war.
“Russia has no chance on the battlefield, and tries to compensate for its military defeat with terror,” he said. “Why this terror? To put pressure on us, on Europe, on the whole world.”