Russian attacks on the power system in Ukraine’s eastern Dnipropetrovsk region have left 600,000 people without electricity as the Kremlin’s campaign against energy targets continued on November 8.
Regional military chief Oleksandr Hanzha said hospitals had been forced to switch to diesel generators and electric-powered public transport had ground to a halt in Dnipro.
“Power company workers are already working to restore power. Their efforts are being hampered by constant Russian shelling,” he wrote in a statement on social media.
The attacks came a day after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of seeking to apply maximum pressure ahead of trilateral talks in Abu Dhabi in the coming days by plunging “the entire country into a blackout.”
Russia began stepping up attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure in late September. It has targeted the sector every winter since launching its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
In October, RFE/RL obtained from the Ukrainian armed forces a detailed Russian document that sets out a blueprint for this year’s campaign — targeting power generation and supply, water supply, sewage systems, and heating.
Ukrainian armed forces reported on November 8 that Russia had attacked overnight with three Kh-59/69 guided aircraft missiles from the Sea of Azov and 164 strike UAVs, 112 of which were jet-powered.
They said 137 drones had been intercepted. But a drone strike on a private residence in a Dnipro suburb caused a fire, while another strike in the city killed one civilian and injured another, Ukrainian authorities said.
Four people were injured in the Poltava region due to Russian attacks.
Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed to have hit an electricity substation “which supplied electricity to Ukrainian defense industry enterprises” and a container ship in the Black Sea “delivering weapons.”
Authorities in Russia’s Kursk region, which borders Ukraine, said a 40-year-old man was killed when a tractor was hit in a drone strike.
Battlefield claims could not be independently verified.
