At least 6 killed in Kyiv as overnight Russian strikes on energy sites plunge Ukraine into darkness

At least six people were killed in Kyiv and thousands across Ukraine were left without power as Russian aerial attacks targeted the country’s energy infrastructure overnight, Ukrainian authorities said on Wednesday.

According to the State Emergency Service of Ukraine, two people were killed when a Russian strike caused a fire to break out in a 16-storey apartment block. A total of 19 people, including five children, were injured in Russian strikes on the Ukrainian capital overnight, Kyiv Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko said.

Mykola Kalashnyk, head of the military administration for the surrounding Kyiv region, said that separate Russian strikes on the outskirts of the capital had also killed a man, a woman, and two children aged six months and 12 years old. 

In southeastern Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region, Governor Ivan Fedorov said 15 people had been injured as Russia struck 15 apartment blocks and other buildings across the regional capital Zaporizhzhia with at least 10 drones overnight.

Ukraine’s national grid operator Ukrenergo introduced emergency power outages in “most regions” of the country following what it called a “massive missile and drone attack on energy infrastructure” by Russia. 

Private energy company DTEK said emergency power cuts were in place in Kyiv and the surrounding region, as well as the central Dnipropetrovsk region, and that it had restored power to over 14,000 households in the southern Odesa region after a Russian strike caused “significant” damage to an energy facility.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the country had been subjected to “another night proving that Russia does not feel enough pressure for dragging out the war” and called on the West to deliver a “united response to Russia’s vile strikes”.

“Russian words about diplomacy mean nothing as long as the Russian leadership does not feel critical problems. And this can be ensured only through sanctions, long-range capabilities, and coordinated diplomacy among all our partners”, Zelensky wrote on X, adding that Kyiv expected “strong sanctions” on Russia from both the EU and the US.

Russian officials also reported Ukrainian attacks on energy and military infrastructure overnight, with independent news outlets confirming that Ukrainian drones had struck an oil refinery in the city of Makhachkala, in Russia’s North Caucasus republic of Dagestan, and a weapons manufacturer in the city of Saransk in the central republic of Mordovia.

The strikes came just hours after the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said on Tuesday evening that its units had used UK-made Storm Shadow missiles to strike a chemical plant in the southern Russian city of Bryansk, which it called a “key facility of the aggressor state’s military-industrial complex” responsible for producing gunpowder, explosives and rocket fuel components.