Russian strikes cut power to hundreds of thousands in Ukraine

Russian strikes on Ukraine's energy infrastructure have left hundreds of thousands of homes without power in the Dnipropetrovsk and Kharkiv regions, authorities reported on Sunday. With temperatures near freezing, Ukraine is bracing for another harsh winter of war as Russia intensifies daily aerial assaults on the power network.

Over 600,000 residents in the Dnipropetrovsk region are currently without electricity following a night attack that damaged key energy facilities, according to the DTEK power company. They are working to restore electricity, but repeated attacks are complicating the task. A drone strike in the northeastern Kharkiv region left nearly 250,000 customers without power, though the exact time for restoring power remains uncertain.

These strikes follow a massive attack on energy facilities that plunged residents in five regions into darkness, hampering electricity transmission in Kyiv. President Volodymyr Zelensky has accused Russia of intensifying strikes as pressure on Kyiv during US-brokered trilateral talks in Abu Dhabi scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday.

The Russian invasion has targeted Ukraine's energy grid and infrastructure throughout the four-and-a-half-year conflict, and Kyiv is now entering another wartime winter with temperatures already near freezing.