Russia ramps up infrastructure strikes on Ukraine, leaving large parts of Kyiv and Kryvyi Rih in dark

Russia’s military launched a “massive” drone assault on the eastern Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih on Tuesday night, leaving more than 700 apartment buildings without heat and some 45,000 people without power, according to Oleksandr Vilkul, the head of the city’s Defence Council.

The attack, which comes less than one week after Russian forces launched ballistic missiles at the city, killing one person, primarily targeted civilian infrastructure facilities and caused multiple fires, which have since been extinguished, Vilkul said. 

On Wednesday morning, Mykola Lukashuk, the head of the regional parliament, confirmed the attack, announcing that Russian drones had damaged three private homes and several businesses in the city, while reporting no casualties. 

The drone strikes are the latest in a broader Russian campaign targeting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. On Monday night, airstrikes on the Black Sea port city of Odesa and a ballistic missile attack on Kyiv triggered widespread emergency power outages, with hundreds of thousands of households in the capital still without electricity, CNN reported.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky condemned Russia’s deliberate targeting of energy facilities during Ukraine’s cold winter on Tuesday, while praising the professionalism of repair workers and emergency services around the country who he said had been “working around the clock”.

Ukraine’s main energy provider, Ukrenergo, reported that power would be temporarily cut off across all regions of the country on Wednesday due to Russian missile and drone strikes on energy facilities.

In total, the Russian military launched three Iskander-M ballistic missiles and 113 drones at targets in Ukraine overnight on Tuesday, 79 of which were shot down by Ukrainian air defences, according to the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.