Ukraine says ‘massive’ Russian attack targeted energy infrastructure

By Victoria Butenko, Rhea Mogul and Kosta Gak, CNN

Kyiv (CNN) — Russia carried out a “massive attack” on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, top Ukrainian officials said early Friday, killing at least one person and leaving parts of the capital Kyiv without power.

The Kremlin appears again to be using a tactic deployed in previous years, depriving Ukrainians of power and heat ahead of the bitter winter months. Russia started attacking Ukraine’s energy infrastructure in late September, according to official reports and CNN’s assessment.

The attacks have been almost daily since then, with targets including energy generating facilities, including gas production and distribution.

Russia’s Ministry of Defense said in a Telegram statement Friday that it had launched a “massive” strike targeting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, in what it said was a response to “the terrorist attacks by the Kyiv regime on civilian targets on Russian territory.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called Friday’s strike “a cynical and calculated attack, with more than 450 drones and over 30 missiles targeting everything that sustains normal life, everything the Russians want to deprive us of.”

“It is precisely the civilian and energy infrastructure that is the main target of Russia’s strikes ahead of the heating season,” he added.

It is Russia’s “goal to leave us in darkness, without water and heat,” said the Kyiv region’s governor, Mykola Kalashnik, adding that about 28,000 families in the Brovary and Boryspil districts were without power.

Power outages also affected more than 16,500 households and 800 businesses in the Poltava region, its governor Volodymyr Kogut said.

A 7-year-old boy was killed in a strike on the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia, and dozens more injured, according to foreign minister Andriy Sybiha.

Local authorities say at least 33 people have been injured overall across the Cherkasy, Kyiv, Dnipro and Zaporizhzhia regions.

“In Kyiv, Kharkiv, Poltava, Zaporizhzhia, Dnipro, and other regions, many people remain without power following Russian strikes on civilian energy objects,” Sybiha said.

Workers were taking “all necessary measures to minimize the negative consequences,” Ukraine’s energy minister Svitlana Grynchuk said in a statement Friday.

At least 12 people were injured in Kyiv during Friday’s attack, which had cut some power supplies, said the city’s Mayor Vitali Klitschko.

He said that the left bank of the capital was without power, with the city also reporting water supply issues.

Mykyta Varenya, a 26-year-old coffee shop owner from Kyiv, told CNN he had resorted to using a generator after the latest strikes. “The lights were out, there was no water, so I’m just getting by with a generator,” he said.

“Last year, it had a big impact (on my business). We had problems with the generator at first, gasoline is expensive, and roughly speaking, you end up breaking even, or even losing money with these outages.”

Pensioner Olena, 68, who only gave her first name, was one of the citizens who had queued up at a local shop to buy water after running water in her property was cut on Friday morning.

“There was no water or electricity in the morning,” she said. “Today’s outage was unexpected. But I went and got some (water). I had a little, so I got a little more. We’ll survive somehow.”

Video from Ukraine’s emergency service shows firefighters in Kyiv working to douse a massive blaze at a building site, and escorting residents to safety.

Ukraine’s largest private energy producer, DTEK Group, said Russia targeted its stations, injuring an energy worker and severely damaging equipment.

This is the third strike on DTEK’s facilities in one week, it said in a statement.

Ukraine’s Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said Friday that repair crews were working in all regions to bring back power after the air raid alerts had finished. The water supply should be fully restored in Kyiv and Kirovohrad region by the end of the day, she added.

Svyrydenko said the attack had been one of the largest to specifically target energy infrastructure, and that a significant portion of the missiles fired had been ballistic missiles. “Unfortunately, there is significant damage to the energy infrastructure,” she said.

Four people were injured in the Dnipropetrovsk region, its governor Sehiy Lysak said, adding that 60 drones were intercepted over the region.

Last Christmas, half a million households were left without heating in the Kharkiv region in temperatures of 3 degrees Celsius (37 degrees Fahrenheit).

This is a developing story and will be updated.

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CNN’s Daria Tarasova-Markina and Sophie Tanno contributed reporting.