Russian Attacks Target Ukraine’s Power Grid

Russia destroyed and damaged Ukrainian energy facilities overnight as President Vladimir Putin’s forces continue attacks to disrupt the country’s power system.

Russia targeted the central Dnipropetrovsk and Vinnytsia regions, as well as the Kyiv region and part of the Donetsk region in the east, the Energy Ministry said in a post on Telegram on Thursday morning. The ministry didn’t specify what infrastructure was hit.

DTEK, the country’s largest power producer, said three workers were wounded in the barrage, which did serious damage to one of its thermal power plants. This was the seventh attack against the company’s power plants over the past three months, DTEK said on Telegram.

Read More: Ukraine’s Lose-Lose Energy War

The destruction occurred even as Ukraine downed all 27 explosive-laden Shahed drones and five out of nine missiles launched by Russia overnight, Air Force commander Mykola Oleshchuk reported. 

Ukraine’s air defense failed to intercept ballistic Iskander-M missiles fired from Russia’s Voronezh region, underscoring its vulnerability to these types of weapons as advanced air defense systems donated by Kyiv’s western allies are too few to cover all of the country’s territory.

Russia’s relentless bombing of Ukraine’s power system this year has caused rolling blackouts and left the authorities racing against time to fix the infrastructure before the winter when demand for electricity is the highest.

Read More: Ukraine Can’t Win the War

President Putin so far showed no intention to engage with the Ukrainian peace plan, signing a treaty on military aid with North Korea and touring Vietnam in a snub to U.S. criticism.

Russia said the Ukrainian military also launched drone attacks overnight against its territory. The defense ministry in Moscow reported downing nine drones over the southern Adygeya and Krasnodar regions. A woman died when a drone fell on a house in Slavyansk-na-Kubani, a town in Krasnodar region, the local governor said on Telegram. Single drones were downed over the Belgorod, Rostov and Oryol regions, the ministry said.

The drone attack caused a fire to a fuel depot in Adygeya, regional governor Murat Kumpilov said on Telegram. Tambov governor Maksim Yegorov said that a presumed drone attack lit a fuel reservoir in the region on fire. Ukraine hasn’t made any public statements about whether it launched the strikes.