Ukraine’s critical energy infrastructure was extensively damaged again on Saturday as Russian troops delivered another large-scale wave of missile strikes, leaving 1.5 million or more people without power.
Some parts of Ukraine are reducing their electricity use by up to 20%, the national energy operator Ukrenergo said on Saturday. While these were “significant volumes”, they were not enough for regions where the infrastructure suffered the most damage and Ukrenergo would have to resort to “forced restrictions”, chief executive Volodymyr Kudrytskyi said.
Russian forces have carried out a series of strikes targeting energy infrastructure in recent days, with the latest attacks reported across the country on Saturday morning.
Kudritskyi said that an earlier barrage of strikes carried out from Oct 10-12 was “the largest attack on an energy system in European history”.
Russian forces rained more than 80 missiles on cities across Ukraine on Oct 10, according to Kyiv, in apparent retaliation for an explosion that damaged a key bridge linking the Crimean peninsula to Russia
“The enemy has one goal — to sow panic among the population, intimidate energy workers, bring the energy system to a crisis state,” Kudritskyi added.
He said that in response to the attacks, Ukrenergo has established 70 repair crews with about 1,000 specialists.
“Depending on the degree of the damage after the shelling, it is possible to restore power supply within a period of several hours to a day,” he said.
Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is now two days short of the eight-month mark, and in the past two weeks it has been marked by increased targeting of civilian targets including power and heating facilities, as the Kremlin looks to leave millions of people without electricity heading into winter.
A top aide to Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Russia is trying to provoke a new refugee crisis for Europe by driving Ukrainians from their homes.
“Whether Putin will be able to implement his plan depends on European capitals’ leaders,” Mykhailo Podolyak said.
The strikes against infrastructure have increased as Kremlin troops suffer multiple setbacks on the battlefield in the east and southeast.
Regions ranging from Volyn in Ukraine’s west to Zaporizhzhia in the southeast reported strikes on power facilities Saturday.
Air alarms, indicating possible missiles in the vicinity, sounded multiple times across the country, from the Transcarpathia region in the southwest to Kharkiv, more than 1,000 kilometres to the northeast, to occupied Kherson.
Some 18 long-range missiles were reportedly shot down. Ukrainian officials, including Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, continue to put out urgent calls to allies for better air defence systems.
Many regions are now experiencing blackouts, and several will also have water supplies cut off temporarily, authorities said.
Ukrenergo said it will limit electricity supplies to Kyiv and at least 10 additional regions for now, to ease pressure on generation plants and related infrastructure.
Zelenskiy earlier this week said recent attacks had damaged almost one-third of Ukraine’s power stations, and that estimate is sure to rise.
The scale of new damage incurred on Saturday “is comparable or even exceeds” to what was seen from the Oct 10-12 strikes on energy facilities, Ukrenergo said on its Telegram-channel.
The ongoing air campaign suggests Russia is “seeking to destroy the will of the Ukrainian people”, said Mick Ryan, a military strategist and retired Australian army general.
Gen Sergei Surovikin, the new Russian commander in Ukraine, is believed to have spearheaded Russia’s brutal bombing campaign against civilians in in 2017 in Aleppo, Syria’s second largest city.
“As an air force officer, it is clear he has succumbed to the theory that populations can be shattered by aerial attack,” Ryan said.
