Ukraine said it would impose emergency power restrictions across the country on Monday as a “massive” Russian attack caused further damage to an already vulnerable energy grid ahead of winter, which also killed nine civilians across the country on Sunday. .
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Moscow launched 120 missiles and about 100 drones targeting Kiev as well as the southern, central and far-western corners of the country.
Civilians were killed in the Mykolaiv, Lviv, Kherson, Dnipropetrovsk and Odessa regions in what officials in the capital described as one of the largest barrages in the nearly three-year Russian offensive.
The disaster comes as Moscow continues to advance into Ukraine’s east and with Donald Trump’s imminent return to the White House, raising fears over the future of US support for Kiev.
“A hellish night,” Ukrainian Air Force spokesman Yuri Ignat said on social media, adding that Kiev had shot down “144 targets.”
The country’s grid operator Ukranergo said it would impose emergency measures in all areas on Monday.
“Tomorrow, November 18, all regions will be forced to impose consumption restriction measures,” Ukraenergo posted on social media. “The reason for the temporary withdrawal of restrictions is due to the damage caused to power facilities during today’s major missile and drone attack.”
Zelensky warns that nearly three years of war with Russia have already destroyed half of Ukraine’s energy production capacity.
With the harsh Ukrainian winter fast approaching, the country is already suffering major energy shortages, while its demoralized and depleted forces have been ceding ground to Kremlin troops for weeks.
The major attack came two days after German Chancellor Olaf Scholz called Russian leader Vladimir Putin for the first time in nearly two years and urged the Kremlin chief to end Moscow’s devastating offensive.
‘True reaction’
Kiev had criticized Scholz for reaching out to Putin and said on Sunday the attack was a real response to the Kremlin.
After the attack Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sibiga said, “This is the true response of war criminal Putin to all those who recently called him and visited him.”
“We want peace not through appeasement, but through strength.”
Scholz defended the call on Sunday and insisted that Berlin’s support for Kiev was unwavering.
“Ukraine can count on us,” he said before flying to the G20 meeting in Brazil, promising that “no decisions will be taken behind Ukraine’s back” on ending the conflict.
But Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk joined the reaction on Sunday.
“No one will stop Putin from making phone calls,” Tusk wrote on Twitter. Last night’s attack, one of the largest in this war, proved that telephone diplomacy is the key to real support for Ukraine from the entire West. Can’t take up space.”
The strikes caused massive power outages across the country, raising fears of an uncertain winter ahead.
“A major attack on our country,” Zelensky said.
Accusing Moscow of trying to “scare us with cold and blackouts”, he said, “In the past week, the aggressors used about 140 missiles of various types, more than 900 guided aerial bombs and more than 600 strike drones. “
Civilian deaths throughout Ukraine
AFP journalists heard explosions near Sloviansk in Kiev and the Donetsk region in the early morning.
Meanwhile, Moscow said it had hit all its targets and claimed it had hit “essential energy infrastructure supporting the Ukrainian military-industrial complex”.
But civilian deaths were reported throughout the country.
Authorities in Kherson said a 51-year-old woman was killed by a drone.
In the southern Mykolaiv region, local leader Vitaly Kim said two women were killed and seven people, including two children, were injured in a nighttime attack.
Sergei Lysak, the governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region, and the operator said the dead included two employees of the state-run railway company Ukrzaliznitsa in the city of Nikopol, who were killed when a depot was hit. Three others were injured in the bombing.
Two people were also killed in the Odessa area, where a teenager was injured.
Russian drones also headed toward Zakarpattia, a mountainous region that is rarely targeted, officials said, adding that fragments fell in the village of Pavshino near the border with Hungary and Slovakia.
The head of the Lviv region, Maksim Kozitsky, said a 66-year-old woman died in her car in Sheptsky, a village about 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the Polish border.
That prompted NATO-member Poland to deploy warplanes and mobilize all available forces on Sunday in response.
Warsaw puts its armed forces on alert when it believes that an attack against its neighboring country is likely to pose a threat to its own territory.
Two died in Russia
In the border Kursk region, where Kiev has seized large swathes of Russian land since the summer, Russian officials said a Ukrainian drone strike killed a local journalist.
Kursk leader Alexei Smirnov said that Yulia Kuznetsova, editor of the local “People’s Paper”, was murdered in the Bolshesoldatsky district because she “carried records to her editorial office”.
The West and Ukraine say thousands of North Korean troops are in Russia, some of them in the Kursk region, to reinforce Moscow’s military.
Russia also said one person was killed by a Ukrainian drone in its border region of Belgorod.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
