- Ukraine faces ‘critical’ power situation, official says
- Three dead in new strikes in Kyiv
- Three explosions hit the port of Mykolaiv – witness
- The city of Zhytomyr was left without electricity, water
- Zelenskiy accuses Russia of targeting civilians
KIEV/MYKOLAIV, Ukraine, Oct 18 (Reuters) – Russia has destroyed nearly a third of Ukraine’s power plants in the past week, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Tuesday, as Moscow rained more missiles on infrastructure in the which Kyiv and the West call a campaign to intimidate civilians.
The missiles hit power stations in the capital Kyiv, killing three people, and in Kharkiv in the east, Dnipro and Kryvyi Rih in the south and Zhytomyr in the west, causing blackouts and cutting off water supplies. A man died in his flat that was destroyed in Mykolaiv, in the south.
Russia has openly acknowledged since early last week that it attacked Ukraine’s energy infrastructure with waves of missiles and drones, in what President Vladimir Putin said was legitimate retaliation for a bridge explosion.
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Kyiv and the West say that deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure is a war crime and that the attacks, which are aimed at leaving Ukrainians without heat and power as winter approaches, are Putin’s latest tactic to escalate a war that his forces are losing.
“The situation is critical now across the country… The whole country must prepare for electricity, water and heating cuts,” Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the Ukrainian president’s office, told television ukrainian
In Mykolaiv, Reuters heard three explosions early Tuesday. A missile completely destroyed a wing of a building in the downtown area, leaving a massive crater. A fire team was seen removing the body of a man from the rubble.
Russians “probably enjoy it,” said Oleksandr, the owner of a nearby flower shop.
Zelenskiy said Russia continued to try to terrorize and kill Ukrainian civilians.
“Since October 10, 30% of Ukraine’s power plants have been destroyed, causing massive blackouts across the country,” he wrote on Twitter.
Zelenskiy reiterated his refusal to negotiate with Putin, who he says heads a “terrorist state”.
Zelenskiy ruled out negotiations with Putin last month after the Russian leader announced the annexation of four Ukrainian provinces. Putin has also called up hundreds of thousands of reservists and has repeatedly threatened to use nuclear weapons since mid-September, after his forces suffered humiliating losses on the battlefield.
‘KAMIKAZE DRONES’
There was no immediate word on how many people had died in Tuesday’s strikes overall. A day earlier, Russia sent swarms of drones to attack infrastructure in Kyiv and other cities, killing at least five people.
Moscow denies deliberately targeting civilians, although it has hit villages, towns and cities in Ukraine in what it initially called a “special military operation” to disarm its neighbor.
A local resident takes pictures of a building heavily damaged by a Russian missile attack, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Mykolaiv, Ukraine, October 18, 2022. REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko
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The Russian defense ministry repeated earlier statements that it was carrying out strikes with high-precision weapons against what it described as military targets and energy infrastructure across Ukraine.
Ukraine accuses Russia of using Iranian-made Shahed-136 “kamikaze drones”, which fly to their target and detonate. Iran denies supplying them and on Tuesday the Kremlin also denied using them.
However, two senior Iranian officials and two Iranian diplomats told Reuters that Tehran had promised to provide Russia with more drones and surface-to-surface missiles, a move that is sure to anger the United States and its allies.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said he would ask Zelenski to formally cut diplomatic ties with Iran in protest over the drones. “Iran’s actions are vile and deceitful,” he said.
NATO will deliver air defense systems to Ukraine “in the coming days” to help the country defend itself against drones, the alliance’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, said.
‘GENERAL ARMAGEDDON’
Russia earlier this month appointed General Sergei Surovikin as the overall commander of Moscow’s forces in Ukraine. Surovikin, nicknamed “General Armageddon” in the Russian media, served in Syria and Chechnya, where Russian forces reduced cities to rubble in a brutal but effective scorched-earth policy against their enemies.
His appointment was quickly followed on October 10 by the largest wave of missiles against Ukraine since the start of the war.
Putin launched the attacks in retaliation for an explosion that damaged Russia’s bridge in Crimea, the peninsula that Moscow seized from Ukraine in 2014. Kyiv has not claimed responsibility for the attack, but has celebrated the destruction of what it considers a military target used to transport weapons and troops. .
British Armed Forces Minister James Heappey told BBC Radio that Surovikin was pursuing a cruel and senseless strategy which he said would fail in his aim of trying to “break the will of the Ukrainian people”.
The Kremlin said on Tuesday that four Ukrainian regions it says it has annexed in recent weeks were under the protection of its nuclear arsenal.
The statement comes as both NATO and Russia prepare to hold annual military exercises to test the readiness of their nuclear weapons forces. Russia’s defense ministry said on Tuesday that two of its nuclear-capable Tu-95MS strategic bombers had carried out a more than 12-hour flight over the Pacific Ocean, the Bering Sea and the Sea of Okhotsk.
Putin has previously said he is willing to use nuclear weapons if necessary to defend Russia’s “territorial integrity.”
The governors of the Russian regions of Kursk and Belgorod, which border Ukraine, denounced cross-border shelling on Tuesday.
In Belgorod, a train station was bombed and train links were suspended, and two villages were bombed in Kursk, causing power outages, they said.
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Reuters bureau reports; Written by Andrew Osborn and Gareth Jones; Editing by Philippa Fletcher and Peter Graff
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