Russia hits Ukraine’s energy infrastructure in a renewed assault
KYIV, Ukraine — Russia launched a missile attack on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure early Friday, in an assault that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy described as “one of the largest strikes” on his country’s power facilities.
The attack consisted of 93 missiles and 200 drones, Zelenskyy said on social media, “including at least one North Korean missile.”
Ukraine’s energy minister, Herman Halushchenko, said on Facebook, “Once again, the energy sector across Ukraine is under massive attack.”
Of the 81 missiles that Ukraine managed to shoot down, 11 were intercepted by F16 fighter jets provided by allies, Zelenskyy said. He once again urged Ukraine’s partners to respond, saying, “The world can stop this madness.”
The International Atomic Energy Agency had made a renewed call Thursday for Russia to stop targeting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure: The agency’s board of governors signed a resolution addressing the threats that the attacks pose to nuclear safety.
“The international community must increase pressure on Russia for its deliberate attempts to create a radiation disaster on the continent,” the resolution said.
The agency said after Friday’s attack that five of Ukraine’s nine operating nuclear reactors had to reduce their power output because of Russia’s “renewed attacks on energy infrastructure.”
The first reports of damage after the assault came from western Ukraine. The Lviv and Ternopil regions reported power outages, and Svitlana Onyshchuk, the head of the Ivano-Frankivsk military administration, said on social media that her region had experienced “the most massive attack since the start of the full-scale war.”
Russia launches exploding drones at Ukraine nightly. The larger waves, which combine various types of missiles along with the drones, have come every few weeks and are typically aimed at electrical infrastructure such as power plants, in a long-running campaign to black out the country.
Military analysts had speculated this week that President Vladimir Putin of Russia could try to escalate these attacks as a show of force after the fall of President Bashar Assad of Syria, Russia’s ally.
Some analysts have said, however, that Russia is at the limits of its capacity for launching missiles, having depleted its stockpiles and firing as many missiles as its industry can produce.
On Wednesday, Sabrina Singh, a Pentagon spokesperson, said it was possible that Russia could fire another of a new type of intermediate-range ballistic missile, the Oreshnik, in the coming days. Russia fired an Oreshnik missile at a rocket factory in Dnipro in November after Ukraine began using American-provided missiles to hit targets in Russia.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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