People seek shelter in the Teatralna metro station during the attack on Monday – Copyright GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP John Gichigi
Barbara WOJAZER
On Monday, Ukraine’s power grid was severely damaged by Russian missiles and drone attacks. At least four people were killed and the authorities were forced to implement an emergency power cut.
According to official sources, 15 regions of the country were targeted in the airstrike, which began at night and was the largest in weeks.
The attacks come as Ukraine launches a major cross-border offensive in Russia’s Kursk region, where Kiev has been fighting for nearly three weeks and claimed on Sunday it was on the advance.
“Russian terrorists have once again targeted the energy infrastructure. Unfortunately, there is damage in several regions,” said Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmygal.
After the barrage, the state-owned electricity grid operator Ukrenergo was forced to shut down the power supply as an emergency measure to stabilize the system, and there were also disruptions to train traffic.
Explosions apparently from air defenses were heard in the capital Kyiv early Monday as residents sought shelter in subway stations, AFP journalists reported.
“We are constantly worried. We have been under stress for almost three years,” said 34-year-old lawyer Yulia Voloshina, who sought shelter in the Kyiv metro.
“Honestly, it was very scary. You don’t know what to expect,” she said.
The Russian Defense Ministry said there had been an attack on the energy infrastructure that serves the Ukrainian defense industry.
Since the invasion in February 2022, Russia has repeatedly launched large-scale drone and missile attacks on Ukraine, including retaliatory attacks on energy facilities.
– “Massive rocket fire” –
Four people were killed and more than a dozen injured across the country in Monday’s attacks, officials said.
The governor of the central Dnipropetrovsk region, Sergiy Lysak, said Russian forces had attacked “en masse”.
“There is one dead person, a 69-year-old man,” the governor wrote on social media.
In the southern region of Zaporizhia, a civilian was killed in the attack, said local governor Ivan Fedorov.
In the western Soviet city of Lutsk, a residential building and an infrastructure facility were damaged by Russian bombings. One person was killed and five others injured, said Mayor Igor Polishchuk.
And in the central Chinese region of Zhytomyr, one person was killed and several injured, authorities said.
Russia also attacked railway infrastructure in the northern region of Sumy, injuring one man and damaging buildings, the national operator of Ukrainian Railways said.
“Some railway stations, which were also cut off from electricity due to the failure of the urban networks, have been switched to emergency power generators,” it said.
The attack targeted energy facilities across the country, including in the southern Odessa region, the greater Kyiv area and the Lviv region in the west of the country, authorities said.
“As a result, there are partial power outages in (the city of) Lviv and the region,” Governor Maksym Kozytskyi said on social media.
Four people were injured in a rocket attack on the southern Odessa region, including a ten-year-old boy, said Governor Oleg Kiper.
In the neighboring southern region of Mykolaiv, three more people were injured by “massive rocket fire,” said Governor Vitaliy Kim.
Earlier, five people were injured in an attack on an industrial facility in the eastern Poltava region, said Governor Filip Pronin.
“The enemy is once again terrorizing the entire Ukraine with missiles. The energy sector is in the crosshairs,” said Energy Minister German Galushchenko.
Andriy Yermak, chief of staff of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, said the attack showed that Kyiv needed permission to “penetrate deep into Russian territory with Western weapons.”
Meanwhile, authorities in the eastern Kharkiv region said a resident was killed by Russian missile fire on Monday morning, but it was not immediately clear whether the incident was part of the missile and drone attack.
– Strike in Kramatorsk –
The airstrike came after a Reuters security adviser was killed in a rocket attack on a hotel in eastern Ukraine late Saturday.
“Despite all this, the world must not stop putting pressure on the terrorist state,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said after the attack, referring to Russia after its invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Zelensky also announced on Sunday that his troops were advancing into Russia’s Kursk region, more than two weeks after Kyiv’s surprise invasion.
