Kyiv, Ukraine: Russia pounded Ukraine on Sunday with a massive attack that killed 11 civilians across several regions and damaged the country’s already fragile energy grid, as the world prepared to mark 1,000 days since Moscow’s invasion.
Nationwide emergency power restrictions would be implemented Monday ahead of a much-feared winter, the state grid operator announced.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said Moscow launched 120 missiles and almost 100 drones, targeting Kyiv as well as southern, central and far-western corners of the country.
The attack, which officials said was one of Russia’s largest, came as Moscow’s assault neared its 1,000th day, which will be marked at the United Nations on Monday.
Civilians were killed in the Mykolaiv, Lviv, Kherson, Dnipropetrovsk and Odesa regions.
Rescuers scrambled to respond, with firefighters in the Odesa region hosing down heavily damaged buildings, showing a baby crib damaged in a residential house.
The devastation comes at a time when Moscow has been steadily advancing in Ukraine’s east and with the imminent return of Donald Trump to the White House, raising fears over the future of US support for Kyiv.
Many fear a third winter of war will be the toughest yet, with Ukraine’s energy infrastructure already damaged by intense Russian attacks.
“Tomorrow, November 18, all regions will be forced to apply consumption restriction measures,” grid operator Ukrenergo posted on social media. “The reason for the temporary return of restrictions is the damage to power facilities during today’s massive missile and drone attack.”
Russia has already destroyed half of Ukraine’s energy production capacity, Zelensky has warned.
The giant attack Sunday came two days after German Chancellor Olaf Scholz called Russian President Vladimir Putin for the first time in almost two years, urging the Kremlin chief to end Moscow’s devastating offensive.
‘True response‘
Kyiv had slammed Scholz for reaching out to Putin, and said Sunday that the attack was the Kremlin’s real answer.
“This is war criminal Putin’s true response to all those who called and visited him recently,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiga said after the attack.
“We need peace through strength, not appeasement.”
Scholz on Sunday defended the call and insisted that Berlin’s backing for Kyiv was unwavering.
“Ukraine can count on us,” he said before flying to a G20 meeting in Brazil, promising that “no decision will be taken behind Ukraine’s back” on ending the conflict.
But Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk joined the backlash on Sunday.
“No one will stop Putin with phone calls. The attack last night, one of the biggest in this war, has proved that telephone diplomacy cannot replace real support from the whole West for Ukraine,” Tusk wrote on X.
The barrage came as the UN Security Council is due to mark 1,000 days of Moscow’s February 2022 invasion, with Ukraine’s foreign minister Andriy Sybiga travelling to New York for an event on Monday.
Civilian deaths across Ukraine
AFP journalists heard explosions in the early morning in Kyiv and close to Sloviansk in the Donetsk region.
Moscow, meanwhile, said it had hit all its targets, claiming it had targeted an “essential energy infrastructure supporting the Ukrainian military-industrial complex”.
But civilian deaths were reported across the country.
Officials in Kherson reported the deaths of four people.
In the southern Mykolaiv region, local leader Vitaliy Kim said two women were killed in a night attack and seven people — including two children — were wounded.
The death toll included two employees of the state railway company Ukrzaliznytsia in the city of Nikopol, who were killed when a depot was hit, the Dnipropetrovsk region’s governor Sergiy Lysak and the operator said. Three others were wounded in the bombing.
Two people were also killed in the Odesa region, where a teenager was wounded.
Russian drones also made their way to Zakarpattia, a mountainous region rarely targeted, with officials saying fragments fell in the village of Pavshyno, near the border with Hungary and Slovakia.
The head of the Lviv region, Maksym Kozytsky, said a 66-year-old woman was killed in her car in Sheptytsky, a village around 20 kilometres (12 miles) from the Polish border.
That prompted NATO-member Poland to scramble fighter jets and mobilise all available forces on Sunday in response.
Warsaw puts its armed forces on alert whenever attacks against its neighbouring country are deemed likely to create a danger for its own territory.
Russia said Ukrainian drones attacks had killed a man in its border Belgorod region and a woman — named as local journalist Yulia Kuznetsova — in the border Kursk region.
Kursk leader Alexei Smirnov said she had been reporting on the “situation in the region”, where a Ukrainian incursion has displaced thousands.
The West and Ukraine says thousands of North Korea soldiers are in Russia, with some in the Kursk region, to reinforce Moscow’s forces.
