KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine’s electricity grid operator warned of hours-long power outages Friday as Russia zeroed in on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure with renewed artillery and missile attacks that have interrupted supply to as much as 40% of the population at the onset of winter.
Kudrytskyi added that the power situation at critical facilities such as hospitals and schools has been stabilized. Those attacks have also had a knock-on effect on neighboring countries like Moldova where a half-dozen cities across that country experiencedWorld leaders responded after a missile landed in Poland during Russian attacks on Ukraine.
In Nikopol, located across the Dnieper River from the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, 40 Russian missiles damaged several high-rise buildings, private houses, outbuildings and a power line., Moscow intensified its assault on the eastern Donetsk region where Russia’s Defense Ministry said Friday its forces took control of the village of Opytne and repelled a Ukrainian counteroffensive to reclaim the settlements of Solodke, Volodymyrivka and Pavlivka.
At the same time, Moscow is fortifying its defenses in the southern region to thwart further Ukrainian advances. Russian troops have built new trench systems near the border of Crimea, as well as near the Siversky-Donets River between Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts, according to a British Ministry of Defense report.
Reports of torture and other atrocities committed by Russian troops have also emerged from the Kherson region where Ukrainian officials said they have opened more thanAlesha Babenko, from the village of Kyselivka, said he was arrested by the Russians in September and locked in a basement. The 27-year-old said he was regularly beaten by Russian soldiers while bound, blindfolded and threatened with electric shocks.