Kyiv, Ukraine (AP) – Russia attacked power plants and other infrastructure on Sunday, causing widespread blackouts in Ukraine as Kyiv’s forces pressed a swift counteroffensive that has pushed Moscow’s troops out of swaths of territory it had seized in the northeast .
The bombing ignited a massive fire at a power plant on the western outskirts of Kharkiv, killing at least one person. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy denounced the “deliberate and cynical missile attacks” on civilian targets as acts of terrorism.
Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, appeared to be without power Sunday night. Cars drove through darkened streets, and the few pedestrians used flashlights or cell phones to light their way.
Separately, the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in the Russian-occupied south was completely shut down in a bid to prevent a radiation disaster as fighting broke out nearby.
Kyiv’s move in recent days to retake Russian-held areas in the Kharkiv region forced Moscow to withdraw its troops to avoid being encircled, leaving behind a significant number of weapons and ammunition in a hasty flight when the war marked its 200th day on Sunday.
Ukraine’s military chief, General Valerii Zaluzhnyy, said his forces had retaken about 3,000 square kilometers (1,160 square miles) since the counteroffensive began in early September. He said Ukrainian troops are only 50 kilometers (about 30 miles) from the Russian border.
A battalion shared a video of Ukrainian forces in front of a municipal building in Hoptivka, a village just over a mile from the border and about 19 kilometers (12 miles) north of Kharkiv.
Kharkiv Governor Oleh Syniehubov said Ukrainian troops have regained control of more than 40 settlements in the region.
In Russia’s missile strikes on Sunday night, the regions of Kharkiv and Donetsk appeared to be the hardest hit. Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhzhia and Sumy had only partially lost power, Zelenskyy said.
The mayor of Kharkiv, Igor Terekhov, called the power cut “revenge of the Russian aggressor for the successes of our army at the front, in particular, in the Kharkiv region.”
Ukrainian officials said Russia hit Kharkiv’s TEC-5, the country’s second-largest heat and power plant, and Zelenskyy released a video of the burning Kharkiv power plant.
“Russian terrorists are still terrorists and attack critical infrastructure. No military installations, just the goal of leaving people without light and heat,” he tweeted.
But Zelenskyy remained defiant despite the attacks. Addressing Russia, he added: “You still think you can intimidate us, break us, force us to make concessions? … The cold, the hunger, the darkness, and the thirst of us are not so fearful and deadly as your “friendship and brotherhood.” But history will put everything in its place. And we will be with gas, lights, water and food… and WITHOUT you!”
Later in the evening, some electricity had been restored in some regions. None of the outages were believed to be related to the shutdown of reactors at the Zaporizhzhia plant.
While most of the attention was on the counteroffensive, Ukraine’s nuclear power operator said the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, had been reconnected to the country’s power grid Ukraine, allowing engineers to shut down its last operating reactor for protection amid the fighting.
The plant, one of the 10 largest nuclear power plants in the world, has been occupied by Russian forces since the first days of the war. Ukraine and Russia have traded blame for the bombings around them.
Since a Sept. 5 fire caused by shelling knocked the plant off its transmission lines, the reactor has been powering crucial safety equipment in so-called “island mode,” an unreliable regime that has left the plant increasingly vulnerable to a possible nuclear accident.
The International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN nuclear watchdog that has two experts at the site, welcomed the restoration of external power. But IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi said he was “gravely concerned about the situation at the plant, which remains in danger as long as the bombing continues.”
He said talks have started to establish a safety and security zone around it.
In a call Sunday with Russian President Vladimir Putin, French President Emmanuel Macron urged the withdrawal of Russian troops and weaponry from the plant in line with IAEA recommendations.
The withdrawal of Moscow’s forces in recent days marked the biggest battlefield success for Ukrainian forces since they thwarted a Russian attempt to seize Kyiv near the start of the war. The Kharkiv campaign seemed to take Moscow by surprise; he had moved many of his troops from the region to the south in anticipation of a counteroffensive there.
Yuriy Kochevenko of the 95th Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine tweeted a video of what appeared to be the center of Izyum. The city was considered an important command and supply center for Russia’s northern front.
“Everything around is destroyed, but we will restore everything. Izyum was, is and will be Ukraine,” Kochevenko said in his video, showing the empty central square and destroyed buildings.
Meanwhile, the Ukrainian General Staff said Russian troops had also abandoned several settlements in the Kherson region in the southern part of the country as Kyiv’s forces pressed a counteroffensive. He did not identify the areas.
But an official of the Russian-backed administration in the city of Kherson, Kirill Stremousov, said on social media that the city on the northern Crimean peninsula was safe and called on everyone to remain calm.
The Russian Defense Ministry said on Saturday that the withdrawal from Izyum and other areas was aimed at strengthening Moscow’s forces in the neighboring Donetsk region to the south. The explanation was similar to how Russia justified the withdrawal from Kyiv earlier this year.
But Igor Strelkov, who led Russian-backed forces when the separatist conflict erupted in Donbass in 2014, scoffed at the Russian Defense Ministry’s explanation for the withdrawal, suggesting that handing over Russia’s own territory near the border was a “contribution to a Ukrainian settlement”. “
The withdrawal angered Russian military bloggers and nationalist commentators, who lamented it as a major defeat and urged the Kremlin to step up its war efforts. Many criticized Russian authorities for going ahead with fireworks and other lavish festivities in Moscow that marked a holiday in the city on Saturday despite the debacle in Ukraine.
In Moscow, Putin attended the opening of a large Ferris wheel in a park on Saturday and inaugurated a new transport link and a sports hall. The action underscored the Kremlin’s narrative that the war it calls a “special military operation” was proceeding as planned without affecting the daily lives of Russians.
Pro-Kremlin political analyst Sergei Markov criticized Moscow’s festivities as a serious mistake.
“Fireworks in Moscow on a tragic day of Russia’s military defeat will have extremely serious political consequences,” Markov wrote on his messaging channel. “The authorities should not celebrate when people are mourning.”
In a sign of a possible fracture in Russian leadership, Ramzan Kadyrov, the Kremlin-backed head of Chechnya, said the withdrawal was the result of mistakes by the Russian authorities.
“They made a mistake and I think they will draw the necessary conclusions,” Kadyrov said. “If they do not make changes in the strategy of carrying out the special military operation in the next day or two, I will be forced to contact the leadership of the Ministry of Defense and the leadership of the country to explain the real situation on the ground .”
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the head of NATO warned on Friday that the war would likely drag on for months, and called on the West to continue supporting Ukraine during what could be a difficult winter.
Gains from the Ukraine battleground would help as the Biden administration seeks continued financial support for the war effort from Congress and Western allies, said Daniel Fried, a former U.S. ambassador to Poland and now a prominent member of the Atlantic Council in Washington.
“The policy of the Biden administration is evolving in an increasingly justified direction,” Fried said.
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