Russia on Monday deliberately targeted Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, launching a flurry of missile attacks to hit electric power and heat generating facilities in Kyiv and other major cities in the country.
Ukraine’s emergency services said that five regions — Lviv, Poltava, Sumy, Kharkiv and Ternopil — were without power. Internet and heating outages also were reported.
In a televised address on Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Russia had conducted a “mass strike with long-range, high-precision weaponry” against “energy, military command and communications facilities of Ukraine” in response to Saturday’s attack on the Kerch Bridge in Crimea.
“The morning is hard,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a video address earlier on Monday morning, adding that Russian strikes had hit energy facilities in 12 regions across the country.
“They want panic and chaos, they want to destroy our energy system. They are hopeless,” he said.
“They are trying to destroy us and wipe us off the face of the earth…destroy our people who are sleeping at home in (the city of) Zaporizhzhia. Kill people who go to work in Dnipro and Kyiv,” Zelensky said on the Telegram messaging app.
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The strikes were an escalation following weeks of long-range attacks on infrastructure that began last month as Russian forces sustained heavy losses on the battlefield.
Ukraine’s gas transmission authority Operator GTS Ukrainy said in a statement on Monday afternoon that some gas transportation facilities have been working on backup power supply sources after the Russian shelling this morning.
“The operator continues to provide uninterrupted transportation of gas for the needs of Ukraine”, the statement said.
