Air strikes have cut power and water supplies to hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians, part of what the country’s president called an expanding Russian campaign to drive the nation into the cold and dark and make peace talks impossible.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said nearly a third of Ukraine’s power stations have been destroyed in the past week, “causing massive blackouts across the country”.
“No space left for negotiations with Putin’s regime,” he tweeted.
Another kind of Russian terrorist attacks: targeting 🇺🇦 energy & critical infrastructure. Since Oct 10, 30% of Ukraine’s power stations have been destroyed, causing massive blackouts across the country. No space left for negotiations with Putin's regime. @United24media pic.twitter.com/LN4A2GYgCK
— Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) October 18, 2022
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Depriving people of water, electricity and heat as winter begins to bite, and the broadening use of so-called suicide drones that nosedive into targets, have opened a new phase in Russian president Vladimir Putin’s war.
The bombardments appear aimed at wearing down the notable resilience Ukrainians have shown in the nearly eight months since Moscow invaded.
Meanwhile, along the front lines, things remain “very difficult” for Russian troops in the southern region and city of Kherson, according to Russia’s new commander, Sergei Surovikin.
He told reporters in Moscow that the Russian military would help evacuate civilians ahead of an expected Ukrainian offensive.
Russia’s attacks against civilian infrastructure, especially electricity, are war crimes.
Cutting off men, women, children of water, electricity and heating with winter coming - these are acts of pure terror.
And we have to call it as such. https://t.co/3WY743k1iHAdvertisement— Ursula von der Leyen (@vonderleyen) October 19, 2022
Kherson is one of four regions illegally annexed by Russia last month. Regional head Vladimir Saldo said residents of Berislav, Belozersky, Snigiryovsky and Alexandrovsky were to be moved across the Dnieper River, away from Russian troops building “large-scale defensive fortifications”.
Mr Saldo urged residents to stay calm and said they would “remain under the reliable protection of the Russian army”.
On Friday, Mr Saldo had urged Kherson residents to evacuate. Russian authorities promise free travel and accommodations to those who leave for Russia, the only route out that they have offered.
Across Ukraine, even far from front lines, basic utilities are no longer certainties, with daily Russian strikes reaching far into the country and damaging key facilities.
The latest city shorn of power was Zhytomyr, home to military bases, industries and leafy boulevards, about 85 miles west of Kyiv.
The mayor said the whole city of 250,000 lost power and also water initially. Repairs quickly reconnected some homes but 150,000 people were still without electricity hours after the morning strike, regional authorities said.
Mayor Serhiy Sukhomlyn said city hospitals switched to backup power after the double missile strike on an energy facility.
In the capital, Kyiv, missile strikes damaged two power facilities and killed two people, city authorities said. The attack left 50,000 people without power for a few hours, the facilities’ operator added.
Missiles also severely damaged an energy facility in the south-central city of Dnipro, and strikes hit the north-eastern region of Sumy.
Russia is combining different modes of attack. Suicide drones set an infrastructure facility on fire in the partly Russian-occupied southern Zaporizhzhia region, the regional governor said.
Air-defence S-300 missiles, which Russia has been repurposing as ground-attack weapons as its stocks diminish, were used to strike the southern city of Mykolaiv.
In the eastern city of Kharkiv, eight rockets fired from across the nearby border with Russia hit an industrial area, the regional governor said.
In Zhytomyr, school director Iryna Kolodzynska had students back at their desks within 30 minutes of the air raid all-clear. Without power for their computers, they used the class board to work on math equations.
Occupiers continue to terrorize civilians. In Mykolaiv, the enemy destroyed a residential building with C-300 missiles. A person died. There was also a strike at the flower market, the chestnut park. I wonder what the Russians were fighting against at these peaceful facilities? pic.twitter.com/z2SzXDhNUE
— Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) October 18, 2022
“We must not break down,” she said. “There are regions that suffered much more from the war than we did.”
Waves of the explosives-laden suicide drones also struck Kyiv on Monday. One slammed into a residential building, killing four people.
The UN Security Council has scheduled closed consultations on Wednesday afternoon on the Iranian-made drones at the request of the United States, UK and France.
They contend that supplying them to Russia violates the 2015 UN Security Council resolution that endorsed the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and six countries.
A Western official said Russia is pursuing a strategy of “attempting to destroy Ukraine’s electricity network” with long-range strikes that are causing civilian casualties rather than degrading its military.
The official said the Iranian drones “are playing an increasingly significant role, although we can see that Ukraine is effectively neutralising many of them before they hit their targets”.
