KYIV, Nov 18 (AP): Ukraine’s electricity grid operator warned of hours-long power outages on Friday as Russia zeroed in on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure with renewed artillery and missile attacks that have interrupted supply to as much as 40% of the population at the onset of winter.
Grid operator Ukrenergo said outages could last for several hours with colder temperatures putting additional pressure on energy networks.
You always need to prepare for the worst, we understand that the enemy wants to destroy our power system in general, to cause long outages,” Ukrenergo’s chief executive Volodymyr Kudrytskyi told Ukrainian state television on Friday. “We need to prepare for possible long outages, but at the moment we are introducing schedules that are planned and will do everything to ensure that the outages are not very long.”
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Kudrytskyi added that the power situation at critical facilities such as hospitals and schools has been stabilized.
In the northeastern Kharkiv region, overnight shelling and missile strikes targeted “critical infrastructure” and damaged energy equipment, according to regional governor Oleh Syniehubov. Eight people including energy company crews and police officers were injured trying to clear up the debris, he said.
Moscow’s attacks on Ukraine’s energy and power facilities in the past weeks have left millions without heating and electricity, fuelling fears of what the dead of winter will bring. Energy infrastructure had again been targeted on Thursday after Russia two days earlier unleashed a nationwide barrage of more than 100 missiles and drones that knocked out power to 10 million people.
Those attacks have also had a knock-on effect on neighbouring countries like Moldova where a half-dozen cities across that country experienced temporary blackouts.
Russian forces unleashed the breadth of their arsenal to attack Ukraine’s southeast employing drones, rockets, heavy artillery and warplanes resulting in the death of at least six civilians and the wounding of an equal number in the past 24 hours, the office of the president reported.
In the Zaporizhzhia region, part of which remains under Russian control, artillery pounded ten towns and villages. The death toll from a rocket attack on a residential building in the city of Vilniansk on Thursday climbed to nine people, the deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential office Kyrylo Tymoshenko posted on Telegram.
In Nikopol, located across the Dnieper River from the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, 40 Russian missiles damaged several high-rise buildings, private houses, outbuildings and a power line.
In the wake of its humiliating retreat from the southern city of Kherson, Moscow intensified its assault on the eastern Donetsk region where Russia’s Defense Ministry said Friday its forces took control of the village of Opytne and repelled a Ukrainian counteroffensive to reclaim the settlements of Solodke, Volodymyrivka and Pavlivka.
The city of Bakhmut, a key target of Moscow’s attempt to seize the whole of Donetsk and score a demonstrable victory after a string of battlefield setbacks, remains the scene of heavy fighting, said regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko.
The Russian Defense Ministry also said that Ukrainian troops were pushed back from Yahidne in Ukraine’s eastern Kharkiv province and Kuzemivka in the neighbouring Luhansk province. Donetsk and Luhansk were among the four Ukrainian provinces illegally annexed by Moscow in September, together with Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.
At the same time, Moscow is fortifying its defenses in the southern region to thwart further Ukrainian advances. Russian troops have built new trench systems near the border of Crimea, as well as near the Siversky-Donets River between Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts, according to a British Ministry of Defense report.
