Russian airstrikes targeting energy and other facilities rocked Ukraine from east to west Tuesday, causing broad power blackouts. A senior official warned that the situation was “critical” and urged Ukrainians to “hang in there” as neighborhoods went dark.
The aerial assault, which resulted in at least one death in a residential building in the capital, Kyiv, followed days of euphoria in Ukraine sparked by one of its biggest military successes in the nearly nine-month war — the retaking last week of the southern city of Kherson.
At least a dozen regions reported strikes, which caused multiple emergency blackouts.
A Ukrainian air force spokesman said Russia fired around 100 missiles. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy put the number at 85.
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Zelenskyy warned that more attacks may be coming but defiantly vowed, with a shake of his fist: “We will survive everything.” A senior official, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, said the barrage was “another planned attack on energy infrastructure facilities." “Most of the hits were recorded in the center and in the north of the country. In the capital, the situation is very difficult,” Tymoshenko wrote on Telegram.
As its battlefield losses mount, Russia has in recent months increasingly resorted to targeting Ukraine's power grid, seemingly hoping to turn the approach of winter into a weapon by leaving people in the cold and dark.
While city after city reported attacks, Tymoshenko appealed to Ukrainians to hang on and acknowledged the severity of the situation.