More than 100,000 Ukrainian homes have been left without power by the latest Russian drone attacks on energy infrastructure, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has said.
The Poltava, Sumy and Chernihiv regions were affected, Zelensky stated in a post on Telegram.
Ukraine’s energy ministry said it was a continuation of Moscow’s policy of destroying civilian infrastructure ahead of winter. Last year, Ukraine said Russia had destroyed half of its electricity-generating capacity.
But more recently Ukrainian strikes have also hit Russian refineries and an oil depot.
In his post on Wednesday, Zelensky said Russia had carried out almost 100 drone attacks overnight. Energy facilities were the main targets, but a school in the Kharkiv region and a high-rise building in Kherson were also hit, he said.
“New steps are needed to put pressure on Russia to stop the strikes and truly guarantee security. We are working with partners for such pressure,” Zelensky added.
Three and a half years after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, fighting on the ground shows no sign of abating.
On Tuesday a Ukrainian military official acknowledged that Russian forces had crossed into the Dnipropetrovsk region for the first time – but said the advance had been stopped.
Moscow has not laid claim to Dnipropetrovsk, unlike Donetsk and Ukraine’s four other eastern regions.
On Wednesday Russia’s defence ministry said its troops had seized a village in Donetsk. Although Russian forces have suffered high casualties, they have made recent gains in the region.
The latest international effort to achieve a ceasefire in Ukraine was launched by US President Donald Trump earlier this month. He met his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Alaska and Zelensky with European leaders in Washington.
Trump had been pushing for a Putin-Zelensky summit. Ukraine’s president has backed the move, but he has sought security guarantees from Western allies to prevent any future Russian attack in the event of a peace deal.
On Tuesday Zelensky met the head of Britain’s armed forces, Adm Sir Tony Radakin, in Kyiv, as the UK would be ready to put troops on the ground once hostilities had ended.
Also on Tuesday, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said security guarantees for Ukraine would first and foremost enable the Ukrainian army to defend their country in the long term.
