Russian attacks cut power to over 850,000 in Ukraine's Dnipropetrovsk and Kharkiv regions
More than 850,000 people in eastern and northeastern Ukraine lost electricity after Russian strikes on energy facilities, with repairs hampered by ongoing attacks.
An overnight Russian strike on an energy facility left over 600,000 residents of Ukraine's Dnipropetrovsk region without electricity, according to the state-owned power company DTEK. The outage affected the Pavlohrad, Samarivskyi, Kamianske and Dnipro districts as well as the city of Dnipro. DTEK said engineers were working to restore service but repeated attacks were complicating repairs.
In the Kharkiv region, another 250,000 people lost power after a separate strike on an infrastructure site. Mayor Mykola Baksheyev of Zlatopil city said no casualties had been reported and that power engineers were attempting repairs, though a timeline for full restoration was not available.
The incidents follow a Ministry of Energy warning that a massive attack had already plunged residents in five regions into darkness and disrupted electricity transmission in Kyiv. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of intensifying strikes to pressure Kyiv ahead of United States-brokered trilateral talks in Abu Dhabi. Russia's Ministry of Defence said its forces would continue targeting Ukrainian fuel and energy infrastructure it claims supports the Ukrainian military.