Blackouts across Ukraine as Russia launches biggest missile attack in months

Kyiv: Blasts rang out across Ukraine’s capital Kyiv and other cities, as Russia staged its biggest missile attack since August and targeted power facilities with the winter setting in, officials said.

Ukrainians have been bracing for a major attack on its hobbled power system for weeks, fearing crippling damage to the grid that would cause long blackouts and build psychological pressure at a critical moment in the war Russia launched in February 2022.

In this photo provided by the Ukrainian Emergency Service, emergency services workers extinguish a fire following a Russian rocket attack in Lviv, Ukraine, on Sunday, November 17.Credit: AP

Ukrainian defences shot down 140 air targets, President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a statement on the Telegram messaging app.

“The enemy’s target was our energy infrastructure throughout Ukraine. Unfortunately, there is damage to objects from hits and falling debris. In Mykolaiv, as a result of a drone attack, two people were killed and six others were injured, including two children,” Zelensky said.

Two others were killed in the Odesa region, where the attack damaged energy infrastructure and disrupted power and water supplies, said local Governor Oleh Kiper.

The combined drone and missile attack was the most powerful in three months, according to the head of Kyiv’s City Military Administration Serhii Popko.

“Another massive attack on the power system is under way. The enemy is attacking electricity generation and transmission facilities throughout Ukraine,” Ukrainian Energy Minister German Galushchenko wrote on Facebook early Sunday (Sunday afternoon AEDT).

Rescue workers put out a fire of a building which was destroyed by a Russian strike in Brovary, outside Kyiv last week.Credit: Ukrainian Emergency Service via AP

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

The scale of the damage was not immediately clear. Officials cut power supply to numerous city districts, including in Kyiv, the surrounding region and Dnipropetrovsk region, in what they said was a precaution to prevent a surge in case of damage.

Authorities in the Volyn region in northwestern Ukraine said energy infrastructure had sustained damage but they did not elaborate. Officials often withhold information on the state of the power system because of the war.

In Mykolaiv in the south, two people were killed in the overnight drone attack, the regional governor said. Blasts shook the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia and the Black Sea port of Odesa, witnesses said. More blasts were reported in the regions of Kryvyi Rih in the south and Rivne in the west.

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

He described the strike as Moscow’s “true response” to leaders who had interacted with President Vladimir Putin, an apparent swipe at German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who placed a phone call to the Russian leader on Friday for the first time since late 2022.

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

The strikes occurred hours after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky gave an interview on local radio where he said the war would “end sooner” once Donald Trump becomes US president than it otherwise would have.

“It is certain that the war will end sooner with the policies of the team that will now lead the White House,” he said. “This is their approach, their promise to their citizens.”

Russia last conducted a major missile strike on Kyiv on August 26, when officials said it fired a salvo of more than 200 drones and missiles across the country in an attack that attack killed seven people.

Reuters, AP