Kremlin ‘energy terrorism’ leaves millions without power, says Ukraine

More power rationing was announced on Saturday as Russia mounts drone and missile attacks on Ukraine’s electricity grid.

Workers repair infrastructure in a power plant on Friday that was damaged by a Russian air attack in the Kyiv region of Ukraine. Electricity and heating outages across Ukraine caused by missile and drone strikes to energy infrastructure have added urgency preparations for winter. Picture: Ed Ram / Getty Images

President Volodymyr Zelensky has accused the Kremlin of “energy terrorism” for leaving 4.5 million Ukrainians without power as Russia attacked the country’s electricity grid.

Ukraine is being forced to ration electricity use after large-scale missile and drone attacks on power plants and sub-stations.

At least nine civilians were killed and 16 wounded in Russian attacks on Ukraine in the previous 24 hours, Mr Zelensky’s office reported on Friday. The Ukrainian leader said that about 4.5 million consumers had been “temporarily disconnected from energy consumption”.

A Ukrainian woman cooks outside her damaged building because of the lack of electricity and gas, in the small town of Moshchun, not far from Kyiv. Picture: AFP

Ukraine’s state energy company on Saturday announced additional power rationing in Kyiv and several other regions of the country following scheduled electricity cuts already imposed to limit consumption following Russian strikes.

“Today the Ukrenergo control centre was forced to introduce additional restrictions in the form of emergency shutdowns for all categories of consumers,” it said, AFP reported.

In Moshchun, a village near Kyiv, Valentina Levtsun, 56, lives alone in a two-floor home where she now has no electricity, heating or water. She cooks her food on a bonfire in the yard and uses an old, unreliable generator to power her phone.

“It’s cold now all the time,” she said. “I don’t know how I’m going to get through the winter if something doesn’t change.”

An aerial view of a destroyed residential area in the village of Moshchun, northwest of Kyiv. Picture: AFP

Mr Zelensky said that over the past month a third of Ukraine’s power stations had been destroyed, leading to the imposition of planned power cuts in an effort to reduce the country’s overall power use by 20 per cent.

He said President Vladimir Putin was also trying to raise pressure on European states, with the war leaving consumers facing heavy bills and potential blackouts.

“Moscow will present any winter difficulties in propaganda as alleged proof of the failure of a united Europe,” Mr Zelensky said. “So together we must prove to the terrorists that failure is a word about them, not about Europe.”

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky listens during a joint news conference with Greece's President in Kyiv on Thursday. Picture: AFP

At a meeting in Germany, foreign ministers of the G7 countries agreed to create a co-ordinating mechanism to aid Ukraine to “repair, restore and defend its critical energy and water infrastructure” before the northern winter.

There were also discussions about which individual countries could provide the weaponry Ukraine needs to fend off more drone and missile attacks.

A woman checks the schedule for planned power cuts in her area on energy company DTEKs website in Kyiv. Picture: Getty Images

The escalation in strikes on Ukraine’s infrastructure, which began on October 10 in retaliation for an attack on the Kerch bridge linking Russia to the Crimean peninsula, have come as Ukraine’s military attempts a counteroffensive in the occupied region of Kherson.

A Russian-installed official in southern Ukraine said that Moscow would probably pull its troops back from the west bank of the Dnieper river in Kherson and urged civilians to leave.

“Most likely our units, our soldiers, will leave for the left [eastern] bank,” Kirill Stremousov, deputy civilian administrator of the Kherson region, said in an interview with Solovyov Live, a pro-Kremlin online media program.

Speaking in Moscow, Mr Putin said civilians should be evacuated. Taking part in an event to mark Russia’s Unity Day, he claimed that a military conflict in Ukraine had been inevitable and that if Russia had not initiated it in February, “everything would the same [now], only with a worse position for us”.

Russia’s defence ministry said that it was evacuating more than 5000 civilians a day to the left bank of the Dnipro.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and former president Dmitry Medvedev at an Orthodox Easter ceremony in Moscow in 2018/ Picture: AFP

In a remarkable outburst, Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of Russia’s security council and a former president of the country, suggested Russia was fighting an existential battle against “a part of the world that is dying”.

That opponent was made up of “a bunch of crazy Nazi drug addicts”, “a big pack of barking dogs from the Western kennel”, and “a motley farrow of grunting piglets and dim-witted philistines from a collapsed Western empire”, Mr Medvedev wrote online.

The Times

Russia detains suspect over deadly bar inferno

Russian police on Saturday detained a man suspected to have caused a huge fire overnight at a bar in the city of Kostroma that killed at least 15 people.

Fire fighters fought through the early hours to put out the blaze at the popular Poligon bar in the city around 300km northeast of Moscow.

Russian agencies earlier reported that the fire could have started after a drunk man fired a “flare gun” on the dance floor.

“Police officers identified and detained the suspect [behind] unlawful acts in an entertainment establishment in the city of Kostroma, which resulted in a fire and the death of people,” Russian police said in a statement.

“He has now been handed over to investigative authorities,” it added, without providing any further details.

Russia’s Investigative Committee opened a criminal case of “causing death by negligence”.

State television showed images of the bar — housed in a single-storey logistical centre — engulfed in flames.

Authorities said the fire started about 2am local time and was put out about 7:30am.

The TASS news agency, citing sources in emergency services, said a drunk man with a “flare gun” was likely to have caused the fire.

“He was spending time in the bar with a woman, ordered her flowers, with a flare gun in his hands,” the source told the agency.

“Then he went to the dance floor and fired it.” Local emergency services said the blaze had spread out over 3500 sq m. On its website, Poligon says it acts as an evening and night-time “place for recreation and entertainment”.

By day, it is a typical Russian “stolovaya” — a casual restaurant serving traditional food.

It says it is housed in a “distribution centre” and is popular with traffic police.

State television showed images of dozens of emergency workers fighting the inferno that had engulfed the building.

Kostroma, a city on the Volga river of around 230,000 people, is one of Russia’s oldest cities and is famous for its medieval architecture and monasteries.

Russia, where there is often a lax approach to safety rules, has seen a number of deadly fires at entertainment venues in recent years.

In 2018, a huge fire killed 60 people in a shopping mall in the Siberian city of Kemerovo.

In 2009, another blaze at a nightclub in the Urals city of Perm killed 156 people.

AFP