Sirens sounded across the country. Russian forces have carried out massive strikes across Ukraine, including in the Kharkiv and Odessa regions, and explosions were heard in Kiev, local authorities said Thursday, as the battle for control of Bakhmout rages.
Since October and after several military setbacks on the ground, Russia has been bombarding key energy facilities in Ukraine with missiles and drones, each time plunging millions of people into darkness and cold in the freezing winter. .
Before dawn Thursday, in Kharkiv, in the east of the country, “the enemy carried out about 15 strikes on the city and the region. The occupants are once again targeting essential facilities,” regional governor Oleg Synegubov said on social media.
“According to initial information, a private residential building in the Kharkiv region was hit,” he added, announcing “clear” details of possible victims and the extent of the damage. Kharkiv Mayor Igor Terekhov explained that the city’s “energy infrastructure”, the main one in the region, had been targeted and that there were “problems” with electricity in some neighborhoods.
Energy restrictions
Energy facilities in Kharkiv had already been hit by Russian strikes in mid-January. The governor of the Odessa region (south), Maksym Marchneko, for his part reported that “missiles hit the regional energy infrastructure and damaged residential buildings”, speaking of a “massive missile strike”.
The attack, which came just over a year after the invasion by Russian troops on February 24, 2022, did not cause any fatalities, according to the governor, but “electricity supply restrictions” were put in place in place. Two people were injured, however, according to a spokesman for local rescuers.
A thermal power plant affected in kyiv
The mayor of kyiv, Vitali Klistchko, reported explosions in the south of the capital on Thursday. Air defense was deployed there, as in other parts of the country, according to the authorities. “Explosions in the Holosiivskyi district of the capital. All services go there,” Klitschko said on social media, referring to a neighborhood in the south of the city.
A thermal power plant in kyiv appears to have been hit, with smoke rising into the sky, according to a video from the correspondent of the Times.
Bakhmout could fall in the coming days
In the West, Khmelnytskyi Region Governor Segiy Gamaliy urged residents to “stay in shelters” as “the enemy is hitting critical infrastructure in the country”. The police reported explosions in Mykolaiv (south) and the media in the regions of Lviv (west) and Dnipro (east) in particular.
These large-scale strikes come the day after the announcement by the head of the Russian paramilitary organization Wagner, Evgeny Prigojine, of the capture of the eastern part of Bakhmout, a small town in eastern Ukraine at the heart of the fighting for months, despite a disputed strategic value.
Bakhmout could fall “in the coming days”, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told the press, adding however that “this does not necessarily reflect any turning point in the war”.