Ukraine’s government has described the situation as “critical” after new Russian strikes pounded the country’s power plants on Tuesday, causing major blackouts as winter approaches.
The latest assaults look like a coordinated attempt to destroy Ukraine’s electricity and water supplies before winter, with energy facilities struck in or near several cities including Kyiv, Dnipro, Kharkiv and Zhytomyr.
Two people have been killed in the attacks on the capital, while a man died after a Russian missile struck a block of flats in the southern port of Mykolaiv, the authorities said.
“The situation is critical now throughout the country, because our regions are dependent on each other,” presidential official Kyrylo Tymoshenko said on television, saying it was “necessary for the whole country to prepare for the possibility of power, water and heating outages”.
It comes the day after several people were killed in another wave of attacks using missiles and so-called “kamikaze drones”. Another victim was reportedly pulled dead from the rubble of a building in Kyiv, raising to 10 the total number of those killed in Monday’s strikes.
More deaths as Russia strikes power plants and homes
In Kyiv, the strikes targeted key infrastructure and caused power and water cuts on the capital’s left bank, the Ukrainian prosecutor’s office said on Tuesday. “Two people were killed and one injured,” it added.
Earlier, officials and witnesses reported several explosions as Russian forces attacked energy infrastructure in northern Kyiv, sending smoke rising over the city.
Tymoshenko said there had been three Russian strikes on an unspecified energy facility, while the city’s mayor said the attack was on “critical infrastructure”.
The missile in Mykolaiv, where at least three explosions were heard, completely destroyed one wing of a residential building in the city centre, leaving a massive crater.
A fire crew pulled the dead body of a man from the rubble, a Reuters witness said, and President Zelenskyy confirmed that one person had died in the attack.
The government confirmed fresh strikes on power facilities in Kharkiv, Dnipro, and Zhytomyr around 100 kilometres to the west of the capital.
In Dnipro, a city of a million people where Tymoshenko said there was “serious damage”, the local governor said several districts were without power and water. The mayor of Zhytomyr — home to a quarter of a million people — also reported power and water outages.
“Ukraine is under fire by the occupiers. They continue to do what they do best — terrorise and kill civilians,” Zelenskyy wrote on the Telegram messaging app. “The terrorist state will not change anything for itself with such actions. It will only confirm its destructive and murderous essence, for which it will certainly be held to account.”
Iran-made drones under scrutiny
Monday’s air strikes were the second wave of attacks in a week. Ukraine said they were carried out by Iran-made “suicide drones”, which fly to their target and detonate.
The United States, Britain and France agreed that Iran supplying drones to Russia would violate a UN Security Council resolution that endorsed the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and six powers.
Several EU foreign ministers on Monday called for sanctions against Iran over the transfer of drones to Russia. The White House accused Iran of lying over its denials that Iranian drones are being used by Moscow in Ukraine.
Tuesday’s intelligence assessment by Britain’s defence ministry says Russia’s heightened campaign of long-range strikes has been conducted by cruise missiles, air defence missiles, and “Iranian-provided Shahed-136” drones.
“As Russia has suffered battlefield setbacks since August, it has highly likely gained a greater willingness to strike civilian infrastructure in addition to Ukrainian military targets,” it said on Twitter.
New Zaporizhzhia ‘kidnappings’ — and prisoner exchanges
In a separate development, Ukraine’s state nuclear energy company accused Russia on Tuesday of “kidnapping” two more senior staff at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in southern Ukraine.
The power station’s head of information technology, Oleh Kostyukov, and Oleh Oshek, an assistant to the plant’s director, were seized on Monday, Energoatom wrote on the Telegram app on Tuesday.
“At present, nothing is known of their whereabouts or condition,” its statement said.
Meanwhile on Monday, Ukraine and Russia carried out one of the biggest prisoner swaps so far, exchanging a total of 218 detainees, including 108 Ukrainian women — including 12 civilians according to Ukraine’s chief of staff.
Zelenskyy said later that his troops should take more prisoners, saying this would make it easier to secure the release of soldiers being held by Russia.