A ‘massive attack’ by Russia on Ukraine’s energy system leaves a million people without electricity

Ukrainian Energy Minister Herman Galushchenkodenounced this Thursday that Russia launched a new “massive attack” against the energy system and left a million people without electricity in the west of the country.

The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyassured that Russia carried out an attack with hundreds of drones and more than 90 missiles, some with cluster munitions. “These munitions significantly complicate the work to repair damage,” he said.

In the Lviv region, bordering Poland, 523,000 subscribers The system has been left without electricity due to the damage caused by the attack on electrical infrastructure. The number of people affected is 280,000 in the neighboring Rivne region, and 215,000 They have no electricity in Volhynia, also bordering Lviv.

The mayor of the northeastern city of KharkivIgor Terékhov, has reported on his social networks that the city has been attacked with several missiles during the early hours of Thursday.

Ukrainian anti-aircraft alerts have also been activated in the capital, Kyivand the Russian Army has reached infrastructure located in the northeastern region of Sumi.

Since last March, Russia has launched massive combined attacks against the Ukrainian electricity system on a dozen occasions. As a result of these attacks numerous Ukrainian power plants have been damaged and the country has lost a good part of its generation and distribution capacity.

The last of these attacks took place on November 17 and forced Ukraine to reintroduce scheduled electricity cuts to save energy due to the generation deficit caused by the destruction of equipment in the attacked infrastructure.

kyiv has repeatedly warned of Russian intentions to leave Ukrainians without electricity during the coldest period of the year to demoralize the population and undermine the country’s economy.