By Anastasiia Malenko and Olena Harmash
KYIV (Reuters) -Russia launched a barrage of drones and missiles at Ukraine’s energy infrastructure overnight, forcing nationwide power restrictions and killing six people, including a seven-year-old girl, Ukrainian officials said on Thursday.
Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko accused Moscow of targeting Ukrainian people and power supplies as the cold winter months approach.
“Its goal is to plunge Ukraine into darkness. Ours is to preserve the light,” Svyrydenko said on the Telegram app. “To stop the terror, we need more air defence systems, tougher sanctions, and maximum pressure on the aggressor.”
Regional officials said two men were killed in the southeastern industrial city of Zaporizhzhia, and a seven-year-old girl from the central Vinnystia region died in hospital from injuries sustained in the attacks.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address that a bomb attack on a thermal power plant in Sloviansk in eastern Donetsk region killed two people and injured a number of others.
Prosecutors in Donetsk region said Russian attacks on dwellings in the city of Kramatorsk killed one person and injured three.
Sloviansk and Kramatorsk are considered key future targets in Russian troops’ slow advance westward through Donetsk region.
Russia’s defence ministry said its forces launched a strike on facilities of the Ukrainian military-industrial complex overnight.
Moscow denies targeting civilians and has said its strikes are responses to Ukraine’s attacks on Russian infrastructure.
Ukraine has launched regular drone attacks on military and oil sites as it fights Russia’s almost four-year-old invasion.
Zelenskiy said Russia launched more than 650 drones and 50 missiles in the attacks.
He said in his address that most of the drones were neutralised and two-thirds of the missiles were downed.
Air defence units shot down 592 drones and 31 missiles, the air force said.
UKRAINE ANNOUNCES LIMITS ON POWER SUPPLY
The attacks hit energy facilities in central, western, and southeastern regions, Ukrainian officials said.
The government announced nationwide limits on electricity supplies to retail and industrial consumers. In some regions, water supplies and heating were also disrupted.
Regional officials said two energy facilities in the western Lviv region had been damaged. DTEK, Ukraine’s largest private energy company, said its thermal power stations in a number of regions were under attack.
“(T)his attack is a bad blow in our efforts to keep power flowing this winter,” said Maxim Timchenko, DTEK’s CEO. “Based on the intensity of attacks for the past two months, it is clear Russia is aiming for the complete destruction of Ukraine’s energy system.”
Six children were among the 17 people wounded in strikes on Zaporizhzhia, its governor said. Four people were injured in the Vinnystia region, officials said.
Air alerts lasted nearly the entire night in Kyiv, where residents took shelter in deep underground metro stations.
“There’s nothing good in it. We are doing our best to hide,” Viktoria, 39, mother of a six-year-old boy, told Reuters at a metro station.
“There’s a lot of stress involved. When you wake your child in the middle of the night, he cries because he doesn’t understand why he has to do it.”
(Reporting by Anastasiia Malenko, Yurii Kovalenko; writing by Olena Harmash; Editing by Andrew Heavens, Ron Popeski and Edmund Klamann)
