Russian strikes leave 600,000 in the dark in eastern Ukraine

Russian attacks on Ukraine’s power grid on Saturday left more than 600,000 without electricity in the Dnipropetrovsk region in southeast Ukraine, electricity provider DTEK said on social media.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Sunday morning denounced “an overnight attack on the Dnipro region” that left energy infrastructure damages, also pointing out wider attacks across the country.

“There are widespread power outages across the country…Repair work is underway in virtually every affected city and community.”

“Power company workers are already working to restore electricity. Their efforts are being hampered by constant Russian shelling,” said the region’s governor Oleksandr Hanzha, adding that hospitals and critical infrastructure are now relying on generators for power.

The blackout follows shelling in the region on Nov. 3 that damaged infrastructure in a key industrial region bordering active combat areas, and a wider attack the same day across Ukraine targeting energy facilities.

The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant also lost power overnight, with the International Atomic Energy Agency saying on Sunday morning it is now relying “on emergency diesel generators for reactor cooling and other essential nuclear safety and security functions.”

The attack comes as Kyiv and Moscow gear up for another round of US-brokered peace talks in Abu Dhabi next week. Following the new wave of attacks on Saturday night Zelenskyy called on international partners to ramp up sanctions on Russia to hamper its capability to acquire or build more missiles.

“It is very important that they be synchronized across Europe and G7 jurisdictions. If the world does not have enough anti-ballistic capabilities to protect Ukrainian skies, then the missiles must be stopped on the production lines,” he said.