Russia bombarded Ukraine with drones and ballistic missiles overnight, further damaging its energy system and leaving tens of thousands of people in the capital Kiev and the cities of Dnipro and Odessa without heat, electricity and water, officials said, Reuters reported.
Russia has stepped up its winter campaign of strikes on Ukraine's power grid, leaving major cities in the cold and darkness for long periods, in sub-zero temperatures.
In Kiev alone, about 3.500 apartment buildings were without heat on Thursday after the latest attack that cut off power to nearly 2.600 high-rise buildings, on top of 1.100 already hit by earlier strikes, said Mayor Vitali Klitschko.
More than 100.000 families were without electricity, according to private energy company DTEK, which said one of its thermal power plants was targeted in the attack but did not disclose the location.
Two people were injured in the attack on Kiev, which also hit an apartment building, Klitschko said.
The Ukrainian Air Force said Russia launched 24 ballistic missiles, one cruise missile and 219 drones overnight. Air defenses shot down or neutralized 16 missiles and 197 drones, it said.
Kuleba: Almost 300.000 people in Odessa left without water; Ganja: Four people injured in the Dnieper
Nearly 300.000 people were left without water after the attack disrupted electricity supplies in the southern city of Odessa, Deputy Prime Minister Oleksiy Kuleba said. He added that nearly 200 buildings in the strategic Black Sea port were left without heating.
The head of the military administration, Serhiy Lisak, said the attack also damaged an apartment building and caused a fire that engulfed one of the city's markets, injuring one person.
In the industrial city of Dnipro in the southeast, a combined missile and drone strike wounded four people, including a baby boy and a four-year-old girl, regional governor Oleksandr Ganja wrote on Telegram.
Two people were killed and six others were wounded in an attack on the Lozova railway junction in the northeastern Kharkiv region, which borders Russia, prosecutors said.
Moscow has denied deliberately targeting civilians during the war, although its attacks have killed thousands of civilians since it launched a full-scale invasion in February 2022. Ukraine has also hit civilian targets in Russia or in Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine during the war, but on a much smaller scale.
"A blow to peace efforts"
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sibikha condemned the attack as undermining peace efforts led by United States President Donald Trump to end the four-year war.
US-backed trilateral talks between Ukraine and Russia have so far failed to resolve key differences between the two sides, while Moscow has continued its offensive on the battlefield and attacks on Ukrainian cities.
"Every such strike is a blow to peace efforts aimed at ending the war. Russia must be forced to take diplomacy seriously and de-escalate," Sibiha wrote on the X network.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Wednesday that the United States needs to put more pressure on Russia if it wants the war to end by the summer.
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