Massive Russian strikes in Ukraine, the largest in weeks, killed at least six people on Thursday and deprived part of the population as well as the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant of power.
In the east, the battle for control of Bakhmout is still raging.
President Zelensky denounced Russian “miserable tactics” following bombings that hit ten regions of the country, including the capital Kyiv, and targeted energy infrastructure. Ukrainian air defenses shot down 34 of the 81 missiles launched by Moscow, he added.
Since October, following several military setbacks, Russia has regularly bombarded Ukraine’s key energy facilities with missiles and drones to plunge millions of people into darkness and cold.
For several weeks these strikes had been less numerous. But at dawn on Thursday, Ukrainian authorities reported explosions in ten regions, in the east, south and west, as well as in Kyiv.
In the Lviv region (west), a “missile” fire on a residential area killed at least five people, announced the regional governor.
The governor of the Dnipro region (center-east) told him that a 34-year-old man had been killed, and that a 28-year-old woman and a 19-year-old young man were injured.
The mayor of Kharkiv, a large city in eastern Ukraine, Igor Terekhov, told him that the whole city was deprived of electricity, water and heating.
The Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, occupied by the Russian army in southern Ukraine, was also cut off from the Ukrainian electricity grid on Thursday following a Russian strike, announced the Ukrainian operator Energoatom.
According to this source, Russian “rocket attacks” have damaged the last line still connecting it to the Ukrainian network and emergency diesel generators have been activated to ensure a minimum supply.
Risk of nuclear accident
But the operator warned of a risk of nuclear accident if the power plant’s external power supply was not restored.
The Ukrainian army said it succeeded in shooting down “34 missiles” out of 81, as well as four out of eight Iranian-made Shahed explosive drones.
In Kyiv, Mayor Vitali Klitschko reported several explosions in the south and then the west of the city, where at least two people were injured.
On Prospekt Peremogi, in the west of the capital, three cars parked near a high apartment building were charred, noted an AFP correspondent, and several others damaged.
“There was a very strong explosion,” testifies Igor Iéjov, 60, who evacuated the building with his wife. “When it happens very close to you, it’s really a feeling of fear.”
There is blood on the ground. “Two women who were walking received glass,” adds Igor Yejov.
The mayor wrote that regarding 15% of Kyiv residents are without electricity due to preventive cuts, while the military administration claimed that 40% of users in the capital were without heating.
«Massive missile strike»
The governor of the Odessa region (south), Maksym Marchenko, for his part reported that “missiles hit the regional energy infrastructure and damaged residential buildings”, speaking of a “massive missile strike”.
The attack, which came just over a year following the invasion by Russian troops on February 24, 2022, left two injured, according to a spokesman for local relief workers.
Electricity had been cut “as a precaution” in the city, said a spokesman for the regional administration, Serguiï Bratchouk.
In the West, the governor of the Khmelnytsky region, Serguiï Gamaliï, urged the inhabitants to “stay in the shelters”, because “the enemy strikes the essential infrastructures of the country”.
Battle for Bakhmout
These large-scale strikes come the day following the announcement by the boss of the Russian paramilitary organization Wagner, Evgeny Prigojine, of the capture of the eastern part of Bakhmout, a small town in eastern Ukraine at the heart of the fighting for months, despite a disputed strategic value.
On Thursday, Mr. Prigojine also claimed that his fighters had conquered the tiny village of Doubovo-Vassylivka, north of Bakhmout.
The city might fall “in the next few days”, warned NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, adding however that “this does not necessarily reflect any turning point in the war”.
Ukrainian officials, including President Volodymyr Zelensky himself, judged on the contrary that the fall of the city might open the way to a Russian advance in the East, and dispatched reinforcements.
Thursday’s strikes also follow a Wednesday meeting of the EU’s 27 defense ministers in Stockholm, with their Ukrainian counterpart Oleksiï Reznikov, to negotiate a plan for deliveries of shells and ammunition to Kyiv, which might be increased to two. Billions of Euro’s.