Ukraine’s power infrastructure has come “under massive enemy attack”, according to the country’s energy minister, leaving more than 1 million people without electricity.
In a Facebook post on Thursday, Energy Minister German Galushchenko said that “attacks on energy facilities are taking place across Ukraine”, adding that the national power grid’s operator had “urgently introduced emergency power cuts”.
Russia’s Ministry of Defence has not yet made any announcements.
Explosions were heard in the Ukrainian cities of Odesa, Kropyvnytskyi, Kharkiv, Rivne and Lutsk on Thursday morning.
“Air defence forces work in the capital. Stay in shelters!” Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said on the Telegram messaging app.
The regional military administration reported on its Telegram channel that the infrastructure of the Shostka community in Ukraine’s Sumy region also came under a Russian missile strike, with its impact being assessed.
Three missile strikes were reported on the Kyiv district of Kharkiv by the head of the regional military administration, Oleg Sinegubov.
There are power outages in Kyiv, Odesa, Dnipro and Donetsk regions, according to national power grid operator Ukrenergo, as temperatures across the country dropped to about 0 degrees Celsius (32 degrees Fahrenheit).
More than a million subscribers in Ukraine’s west, hundreds of kilometres from the front lines, were without power.
Regional officials said at least another 280,000 people were cut off in the western Rivne region and another 215,000 in the northwestern Volyn region, which also borders Poland, a member of the European Union and NATO.
The ministry said it was the 11th massive Russian attack on Ukraine’s civilian energy infrastructure this year.
