Russia pounds Ukraine’s power grid in ‘massive’ air strike

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By Tom Balmforth and Dan Peleschuk

KYIV (Reuters) -Russia unleashed its largest wave of airstrikes on Ukraine in almost three months on Sunday, firing 120 missiles and 90 drones in a sweeping attack that killed at least seven people and caused “severe damage” to the power system, officials said.

Ukrainians have been bracing for weeks for an attack on the hobbled energy system, fearing crippling damage that would cause long blackouts as winter sets in and ramp up psychological pressure at a critical moment in the war launched by Russia in February 2022.

The strikes, which prompted emergency power cuts in numerous regions, came after this month’s U.S. presidential election victory of Donald Trump, whose pledge to end the war without saying how has raised the prospect of a looming push to hold negotiations.

“Russia launched one of the largest air attacks: drones and missiles against peaceful cities, sleeping civilians, critical infrastructure,” Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha wrote on X.

Air defences could be heard engaging drones over the capital in the night, and a series of powerful blasts rang out across the city centre as the missile attack was under way in the morning.

There was no immediate comment from Russia.

“Severe damage to Ukraine’s energy system, including to DTEK power stations. These attacks again highlight Ukraine’s need for additional air defence systems from our allies,” said Maxim Timchenko, CEO of DTEK which is Ukraine’s largest private energy provider.

After repeated Russian attacks on the power grid, officials reveal little about the state of the energy infrastructure and seldom release detailed information on the outcome of strikes.

Officials confirmed damage to “critical infrastructure” or reported power cuts in regions spanning from Volyn, Rivne, Lviv in the west to the southeastern Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhia regions. DTEK imposed emergency power cuts in the southern Odesa region at the order of energy officials.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the “massive combined attack targeted all regions of Ukraine”.

In Mykolaiv in the south, two people were killed in an overnight drone attack, the governor said. Two people died and three were wounded in a strike on a rail depot in the Dnipropetrovsk region, rail authorities said.

In Lviv region, on the border with Poland, a woman in a car was killed, the governor said. Another two people were killed in the Odesa region.

In Kyiv, the roof of a residential building caught fire due to falling debris and at least two people were hurt, city officials said on the Telegram messaging app.

The huge wave of strikes took place as the war approaches this week’s 1,000th day since Russia’s full-scale invasion.

Russia last conducted a major missile strike on Kyiv on Aug. 26, when officials said it fired a salvo of more than 200 drones and missiles across the country, killing seven people.

MOUNTING PRESSURE

NATO member Poland, which borders Ukraine to the west, said it had scrambled its air force inside its airspace as a security precaution during the attack, which it said used cruise missiles, ballistic missiles and drones.

Russia’s onslaught piles more pressure on Ukraine as Moscow’s troops notch up their fastest battlefield gains in the east since 2022 in their effort to seize the entire industrial Donbas region despite taking heavy losses, according to Kyiv and the West.

Ukrainian troops are meanwhile trying to hold an area of land that they seized in Russia’s Kursk region in August, something Kyiv has said could serve as a bargaining chip further down the line.

Sybiha said the strike appeared to be Moscow’s “true response” to leaders interacting with President Vladimir Putin, an apparent swipe at German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who called the Russian leader on Friday for the first time since late 2022.

Though Scholz urged Putin to pull his troops out of Ukraine where they occupy a fifth of the country, Kyiv bridled at the fact of the call, which it said reduced the isolation of the Kremlin leader.

(Reporting by Pavel Polityuk, Tom Balmforth, Valentyn Ogirenko in KyivWriting by Lidia Kelly and Tom BalmforthEditing by William Mallard and Frances Kerry)