Selenskyj described the recent attacks on Ukraine as “vile blows against critical objects”. “Typical terrorist tactics,” he wrote.
The utility Ukrenergo had previously reported that several energy plants in western Ukraine had been hit by another shelling. The extent of the damage was “comparable to the consequences of the attacks from October 10th to 12th or could even exceed them,” Ukrenergo explained in the online networks.
So far, around 670,000 electricity consumers in the Khmelnytskyi region have been disconnected from the supply, said the deputy head of the Ukrainian Presidential Office, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, in the online networks. In the Mykolayiv, Volyn, Cherkasy, Rivne, Kirovograd and Odessa regions there are also tens or even hundreds of thousands of households without electricity, he wrote.
In a newspaper interview, Prime Minister Denys Schmyhal asked Germany to deliver new ammunition within a few days to ward off Russian air raids. In an interview with the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung” Schmyhal said that the newly delivered German anti-aircraft missile system Iris-T SLM is now in use and has “already saved a great many human lives”. However, Ukraine is “impatiently” waiting for new ammunition, which the country needs “right now”. “It’s literally a matter of days,” said the Prime Minister.
He also asked for jammers to counter “Iranian kamikaze drones,” “mobile equipment for generating electricity and heat,” and water treatment plants. The head of government is expected to attend the German-Ukrainian economic forum in Berlin on Monday.
At the beginning of last week, Russia launched a massive attack on cities across the country, primarily targeting the energy supply infrastructure. For the first time in months, the capital Kyiv and the western Ukrainian city of Lviv were hit again.
At times, the power supply was rationed. Ukrenergo boss Volodymyr Kudritskyi announced on Saturday that the Ukrainians had also voluntarily reduced their electricity consumption in some parts of the country and on some days by an average of five to 20 percent.
Meanwhile, in southern Ukraine, pro-Russian authorities have urged all civilians to leave the city of Kherson “immediately” as Ukrainian forces advance. Because of the tense situation at the front, the increased threat of bombings in the city and the “threat of terrorist attacks,” all civilians must leave the city immediately and cross to the left bank of the Dnipro River, the authorities said in the online network Telegram.
Representative of the region’s pro-Russian administration, Kirill Stremusov, told Russia’s Interfax news agency on Saturday that about 25,000 people have crossed the river so far. The pensioner Valentina Jelkina and her daughter had also left the city. At the train station in the city of Dschankoy in the Crimea annexed by Russia, she reported that she had left Kherson fearing for her life.
A few hundred kilometers northeast of Dzhankoy, in the Russian border region of Belgorod, two civilians were killed in attacks on “civilian infrastructure” in the town of Schebekino on Saturday, according to the local governor. About 15,000 people have no electricity, wrote Vyacheslav Gladkov in the online service Telegram. Russia had reported increased Ukrainian shelling of areas on the border this month.
