Ukraine to face power cuts on Monday after Russian air strike

KYIV: All Ukrainian regions will experience temporary restrictions on power on Monday (Nov 18) following Russia’s massive air strike on the energy system, the national grid operator said.
Russia unleashed its largest air attack on Ukraine in almost three months on Sunday, further hobbling an already damaged energy system.
At least eight people, including a child, were also killed in the strikes when a Russian missile hit a residential building in Ukraine’s northeastern region of Sumy, local prosecutors said.
“As a result of the enemy attack, as of 10pm, eight people were reported dead, including one child, and 10 more local residents were injured,” prosecutors said in a statement.
In a statement, national grid operator Ukrenergo said temporary cut-offs would last from 6am until 10pm, and that workers were repairing damages as quickly as possible.
After Sunday’s strike, Ukrainian officials had confirmed damage to critical infrastructure or power cuts in regions from Volyn, Rivne and Lviv in the west to Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhia in the southeast.
The extent of the damage was hard to assess because authorities reveal little about the outcome of strikes and the state of the energy grid, which Russia had targeted in an air campaign earlier this year.
Russia’s defence ministry said it had launched a massive strike on energy facilities that supply Ukraine’s military-industrial complex.
Russia’s relentless aerial bombardment has destroyed half of Ukraine’s energy production capacity, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said.
Moscow fired 120 missiles and 90 drones at Ukraine, of which 140 were shot down by Kyiv’s air defences, Zelenskyy said on Sunday.
With the harsh Ukrainian winter fast approaching, the country is already suffering from major energy shortfalls, while its outmanned and outgunned forces have been steadily ceding ground to the Kremlin’s troops for weeks.
Kyiv has implored its Western allies for help to rebuild its energy grid – a hugely expensive undertaking – and to supply its outgunned forces with more aerial defence weapons.
But many in Ukraine fear that Western help will not be as freely given following the imminent return of Trump to the White House in January.
The Republican president-elect has frequently questioned the United States’ backing for Ukraine, and campaigned with the promise of cutting a quick deal to end the war.
Besides the capital Kyiv’s region, Ukraine’s grid operator DTEK also announced power cuts in the Donetsk and Dnipropetrovsk regions in the east, where Russia’s army has claimed the capture of dozens of villages in recent weeks.
Power was also cut off in parts of the southern Black Sea port city of Odesa, its mayor said, while officials warned essential infrastructure was affected in the Vinnytsia, Rivne, Volhynia and Zaporizhzhia regions.
Although the extent of the damage is difficult to estimate at present, the grid operator said that this was the eighth major attack on its power stations this year.
The death toll included two employees of the state railway company Ukrzaliznytsia in the city of Nikopol, who were killed when a depot was hit, the Dnipropetrovsk region’s governor Sergiy Lysak and the operator said. Three more people were wounded in the bombing.
Odesa governor Oleg Kiper said strikes on the port city likewise killed two.
A Russian drone strike killed two people and injured six others, including two children, in the southern Mykolaiv region, according to Ukraine’s emergency services.
In the western Lviv region, relatively spared from the conflict, a cruise missile strike killed a 66-year-old woman and wounded two others, said military administration chief Makdym Kozytsky.
Several people were also injured in separate attacks in Dnipro in the east, the central Poltava as well as the southern Zaporizhzhia, Odesa and Kherson regions.
Russian missiles and drones even struck Transcarpathia, a very rarely targeted western region far from the front line on the border with Poland and Hungary, without causing any casualties.
That prompted neighbouring Poland to scramble fighter jets and mobilise all available forces on Sunday in response.
Warsaw puts its armed forces on alert whenever attacks against its neighbouring country are deemed likely to create a danger for its own territory.
Top diplomat Sybiga branded the barrage as Russia’s “real response” to Western leaders who had sought to reach out to President Vladimir Putin.
Kyiv was riled by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz initiating a call with Putin on Friday despite Ukraine’s objections, in what was the Russian leader’s first phone conversation with a major Western leader in nearly two years.
Ukraine accused Scholz of an “attempt at appeasement” and said the call would not achieve anything other than minimise Putin’s “isolation”.
Having repeatedly promised to end the Ukraine war in a day, Trump’s re-election has reignited debate over the prospect of a diplomatic solution to the conflict.
After long dismissing the prospect of talks, Zelenskyy on Saturday said he wanted to bring an end to the war by “diplomatic means” next year.
Yet Kyiv and the Kremlin remain at odds over the terms of any peace deal.
Putin has said he will only accept talks with Ukraine if Kyiv surrenders Ukrainian territory that Moscow occupies.
Zelenskyy has rejected Putin’s conditions.