KYIV, Ukraine – Airstrikes knocked out electricity and water for hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians on Tuesday, part of what the country’s president called an expanding Russian campaign aimed at plunging the nation into the cold and darkness and make peace talks impossible.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said nearly a third of Ukraine’s power plants were destroyed in the past week, “causing massive blackouts across the country”.
“There is no space left for negotiations with the Putin regime,” he tweeted.
Depriving people of water, electricity and heat as winter begins to bite, and the widespread use of so-called suicide drones that swoop down on targets have opened a new phase in Russian President Vladimir’s war Cheese fries. The shelling appears to be aimed at exhausting the remarkable resilience Ukrainians have shown in the nearly eight months since the invasion of Moscow.
Meanwhile, along the front lines, things remained “very difficult” for Russian troops in the southern region and the city of Kherson, according to new Russian commander Sergei Surovikin.
He told reporters in Moscow that the Russian military would help evacuate civilians ahead of an expected Ukrainian offensive.
Kherson is one of four regions illegally annexed by Russia last month. Regional leader Vladimir Saldo said on Tuesday that residents of Berislav, Belozersky, Snigiryovsky and Alexandrovsky should be moved across the Dnieper, away from Russian troops building “large-scale defensive fortifications”.
Saldo urged residents to remain calm and said they would “remain under the reliable protection of the Russian military”.
Also on Friday, Saldo had urged residents of Kherson to evacuate. Russian authorities promise free travel and accommodation to those leaving for Russia, the only way out they have offered.
Across Ukraine, even far from the front lines, basic public services are no longer certainties, with daily Russian strikes reaching far into the country and damaging key facilities.
The last city deprived of power was Zhytomyr, home to military bases, industries and leafy boulevards, about 140 kilometers (85 miles) west of Kyiv. The mayor said the entire city of 250,000 lost power and water initially. Repairs quickly reconnected some homes, but 150,000 people were still without power hours after the morning strike, regional authorities said.
Pavlo Raboschuk, a 33-year-old computer repairman in Zhytomyr, said only small shops that could do without electricity were open on his commute to work.
“Only swear words come to mind,” he said. He is preparing “for a harsh and dark winter”, with dehydrated food, warm clothes and batteries already stored at home.
The city’s hospitals switched to emergency power after Tuesday’s double missile strike on an energy facility, Mayor Serhiy Sukhomlyn said.
In the capital, Kyiv, missile strikes damaged two power stations and killed two people, city authorities said. The attack left 50,000 people without power for a few hours, the facility operator said.
Missiles also severely damaged an energy facility in the central-southern city of Dnipro, and strikes hit the northeast region of Sumy.
Russia is mixing up its modes of attack.
Suicide drones set fire to infrastructure in the southern Zaporizhzhia region, partially occupied by Russia, the regional governor said.
S-300 air defense missiles, which Russia has upgraded to ground attack weapons as its stockpiles dwindle, were used to strike the southern city of Mykolaiv. In the eastern city of Kharkiv, eight rockets fired across the neighboring border with Russia hit an industrial area, the regional governor said.
In Zhytomyr, school principal Iryna Kolodzynska drove students back to their desks within 30 minutes of the airstrike. Without electricity for their computers, they used the classroom blackboard to work on math equations.
“We must not crack,” she said. “There are regions that have suffered much more from the war than we have.”
Waves of explosive-laden suicide drones also hit Kyiv on Monday. One of them hit a residential building, killing four people.
The Iranian-made Shahed drones that hit Kyiv have also seen widespread use elsewhere in Ukraine in recent weeks. An Associated Press photographer captured one on Monday, its triangle-shaped wing and pointed warhead clearly visible, though the Kremlin declined to confirm their use.
A Western official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the intelligence, said Russia was pursuing a strategy of “trying to destroy Ukraine’s power grid” with long-range strikes that cause civilian casualties rather than degrade his army.
The official said Iranian drones are “playing an increasingly important role, although we can see Ukraine effectively neutralizing many of them before they reach their targets.”
In a televised address Monday night, Zelenskyy said Russia was using drones because it was losing ground in the war.
“Russia has no chance on the battlefield and it tries to compensate for its military defeats with terror,” he said. “Why this terror? To put pressure on us, on Europe, on the whole world.
Zelenskyy’s tweet ruling out talks with Putin was not the first time he said he would not negotiate with the Russian leader. Russia and Ukraine held several rounds of talks in the first month after invading Moscow, but they fell apart. The Kremlin has said talks could only be possible if Ukraine meets Russian demands and agrees to its land grabs of Ukrainian territory. Ukraine has categorically ruled out talks under these conditions
In other developments:
– Ukraine’s nuclear power operator said Russian forces arrested two other senior executives at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. Energoatom said their whereabouts are unknown. The whereabouts of another leader who was arrested earlier in October is also unknown.
— In Russia, the death toll from Monday’s crash of a Russian fighter jet in a residential area has risen to 15. The Su-34 bomber crashed in the port city of Yeysk after one of its engines caught fire while taking off for a training mission, the Department of Defense said. The two crew members parachuted out safely, but the plane hit a neighborhood, starting a huge fire, officials said.
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