Blackouts across Ukraine as Russia launches biggest missile attack in months

Kyiv: Blasts rang out across Ukraine’s capital Kyiv and other cities, as Russia staged its biggest missile attack since August and targeted power facilities with the winter setting in, officials said.

Ukrainians have been bracing for a major attack on the hobbled power system for weeks, fearing crippling damage to the grid that would cause long blackouts and build psychological pressure at a critical moment in the war Russia launched in February 2022.

“Another massive attack on the power system is underway. The enemy is attacking electricity generation and transmission facilities throughout Ukraine,” Ukrainian Energy Minister German Galushchenko wrote on Facebook early Sunday (Sunday afternoon AEDT).

Air defences could be heard engaging drones over the capital in the night, and a series of powerful blasts rang out across the city centre as the missile attack was underway in the morning.

The scale of the damage was not immediately clear. Officials cut power supply to numerous city districts, including in Kyiv, the surrounding region and Dnipropetrovsk region, in what they said was a precaution to prevent a surge in case of damage.

Authorities in the Volyn region in northwestern Ukraine said energy infrastructure had sustained damage but did not elaborate. Officials often withhold information on the state of the power system because of the war.

In Mykolaiv in the south, two people were killed in the overnight drone attack, the regional governor said. Blasts shook the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia and the Black Sea port of Odesa, witnesses said. More blasts were reported in the regions of Kryvyi Rih in the south and Rivne in the west.

“Russia launched one of the largest air attacks: drones and missiles against peaceful cities, sleeping civilians, critical infrastructure,” said Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha.