KYIV: Russia launched a barrage of drones and missiles in overnight attacks on Ukraine on Saturday, killing at least three people and damaging large energy infrastructure facilities in three regions, Ukrainian officials said. President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia had launched more than 450 drones and 45 missiles. Two people were killed and 12 were wounded in the city of Dnipro when a drone hit an apartment building. One person was killed in the Kharkiv region, regional officials said. Energy facilities in the Kyiv, Poltava and Kharkiv regions were damaged, Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said.
Zelensky said the strikes showed that sanctions pressure should be intensified. “… for every Moscow strike on energy infrastructure — aimed at harming ordinary people before winter — there must be a sanctions response targeting all Russian energy, with no exceptions,” he said on the Telegram app. Since the start of its full-scale assault on Ukraine almost four years ago, Russia has made a point of attacking the power sector as the need for heating grows. This autumn, it has attacked gas facilities nine times in the space of two months, according to the state energy firm Naftogaz.
Moscow’s Defence Ministry said it had launched “a massive strike with high-precision long-range air, ground and sea-based weapons” on weapon production and energy facilities in response to Kyiv’s strikes on Russia. Russia also said its forces continued to advance in grinding battles around the key towns of Pokrovsk and Kupiansk, and had captured a tiny village in eastern Ukraine. Ukraine regularly sends its drones to strike oil facilities inside Russia. As diplomatic efforts to stop the war have faltered, Kyiv is trying to reduce Moscow’s ability to finance its war.
The Ukrainian air force said 406 Russian drones and nine missiles had been shot down, and 26 Russian missiles and 52 drones had hit 25 sites. Svyrydenko said the government and energy companies were working to restore damaged electricity, water and heating provision. In the central Poltava region, two cities – Kremenchuk with a population of about 200,000 people and Horishni Plavni with some 50,000 residents – lost most of their electricity and were using generators to provide water, city officials said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday appointed a new commander responsible for drone air defences, seen as a critical element in defending against the threat of Russian drones. The president’s website said Yuri Cherevashenko had experience in helping create Ukraine’s first group of reaction forces of air defence mobile brigades. He also played a role in developing interceptor drones, which Zelensky and other officials have portrayed as a key part in countering intensive Russian drone assaults in the more than 3-1/2-year war. Zelensky said a meeting of Ukraine’s command set out several tasks for the new commander, including the development of interceptor drones and the introduction of new means to strengthen air defences. Ukraine’s top commander, Oleksandr Syrskyi, said in September that Ukraine was looking to improve performance by interceptor drones to create a “layered system” of defence against Russian drones.
Separately, US President Donald Trump welcomed Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban to the White House on Friday for a discussion about Hungary’s reliance on Russian oil at a time when Trump has been working to wean nations off of it. Orban, a long-time Trump ally, arrived at the White House at midday on Friday for his first bilateral meeting with Trump since the Republican leader and former New York businessman returned to power in January. — Reuters
