Ukraine’s state-owned power operator on Saturday announced power cuts in Kyiv and seven regions of the country following Russia’s devastating moves in force infrastructure.
The move comes as Russian forces continue to attack Ukraine and villages with missiles and drones, causing damage to forced plants, water materials and other civilian targets, in a bitter war looming nine months from now.
Russia has denied that the drones it used in Ukraine came from Iran, but the Islamic Republic’s foreign minister said Saturday for the first time that it had provided Moscow with “a limited number” of drones before the invasion. Hossein Amirabdollahian, however, claimed that Tehran did know if its drones were being used in opposition to Ukraine and declared Iran’s commitment to ending the conflict.
Ukrenergo, the sole operator of Ukraine’s high-voltage transmission lines, first said in an online message on Saturday that planned power cuts would be taken into account in the capital and metropolitan region of Kyiv, as well as several surrounding regions: Chernihiv, Cherkasy, Zhytomyr, Sumy, Poltava and Kharkiv.
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However, later in the day, the company released an update stating that outages scheduled for an express number of hours are not enough and that there will be emergency outages, which can last indefinitely.
Ukraine has been grappling with power outages and disruption of water materials since Russia began unleashing major missile and drone blockades on the country’s force infrastructure last month.
Moscow said the attacks came in reaction to what it claimed were Ukrainian attacks on Crimea, the region Russia illegally annexed in 2014. Ukraine has denied the allegations.
According to the presidential office of Ukraine, at least 3 civilians were killed and 8 others were injured in the last 24 hours due to Russian shelling of Ukrainian regions, where drones, missiles and heavy artillery were used.
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In the Russian-occupied Kherson region, where a Ukrainian counteroffensive is underway, the Russian military continues to kidnap local residents, the president said.
About 40 shells were fired overnight in the city of Nikopol, Dnipropetrovsk Governor Valentyn Reznichenko said on Telegram. Russian forces have attacked the city and its landscape with heavy artillery, as they have done several times since July. Dozens of residential and application buildings, as well as a fuel line, were damaged, he said.
Elsewhere in the region, Ukrainian forces shot down a drone and a projectile, according to Reznichenko.
In the southern Mykolaiv region, overnight shelling of rural spaces destroyed several houses but there were no casualties, Mykolaiv Governor Vitaly Kim said on Telegram.
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Russian forces also fired missiles at the southeastern region of Zaporizhzhia, which was illegally annexed through Moscow and much of which remains occupied. According to regional governor Oleksandr Starukh, the attack took position shortly afterwards and destroyed 3 businesses as well as a number of cars.
In the eastern region of Donetsk, also annexed and occupied by Russia, 8 Ukrainian cities and towns were bombed, in addition to Bakhmut, Avdiivka and Porkovsk.
The Russian-based government in Donetsk has reported an assassination attempt opposing a ruling approved by Moscow in the region’s Supreme Court. Alexander Nikulin, a member of a judicial panel that sentenced to death two Britons and a Moroccan fighting for Ukraine in June, hospitalized with gunshot wounds and is in serious condition, Kremlin-backed officials said.