Russian forces pounded Ukraine’s power plants and heating systems on Saturday with some of the heaviest missile strikes in weeks, the Ukrainian authorities said, as Moscow pressed ahead with what appears to be a campaign to bring misery to the country’s civilians in the absence of clear gains on the battlefield.
Ukraine, which endures bitter winters, relies on its power supplies to heat homes and run businesses, making its energy supply vulnerable at this time of year. Ukrainian officials confirmed missile strikes in at least half a dozen regions on Saturday, with the country’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, saying that the barrage was “aimed at critical civilian infrastructure.” The state power company said, that while it was trying to restore services, it had imposed energy restrictions in a string of regions, including the capital, Kyiv.
Although Russia has aimed its missiles at cities and civilians throughout the war, not since the first days after the invasion in February has the bombing been so widespread and intense as it has been in recent weeks. Missiles and self-destructing drones have slammed into apartment buildings, bustling streets, parks and playgrounds, killing dozens of civilians. The attacks have damaged about 30 percent of Ukraine’s power plants, according to officials, causing rolling blackouts across the country.
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said late Friday that the recent attacks had a clear goal: “to make the Ukrainian people suffer.”
On Saturday, the Ukrainian state power company, Ukrenergo, said in a post on the Telegram messaging app that damage from the morning’s attacks was “comparable or may exceed” anything it had seen in the last two weeks.
Ukraine has had increasing success in shooting down missiles and self-destructing drones, which are often launched from neighboring Belarus. And on Saturday, as civilians sheltered in basements, the country scrambled its fighter jets to try to blast the incoming missiles out of the sky. Ukraine’s air force command later said on Telegram that it had downed 18 missiles.
In Kyiv, the air raid alarms sounded about 7:30 a.m. local time and were followed quickly by reports of missiles in the air. One video shared by Ukrainian news outlets appeared to show a fighter jet shooting down a missile, though this could not be independently confirmed. Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, said that five rockets headed toward Kyiv had been intercepted, though there were reports of missile strikes in the surrounding region.
By midmorning, there were reports of strikes across the country. In the city of Lutsk in western Ukraine, a missile hit a power plant, causing a blackout in part of the city, the mayor, Ihor Polishchuk, said on Telegram. The blast wave damaged a private home and injured at least one person, he said.
The broad strikes on infrastructure come as Russian forces have faced setbacks on the front lines. In a rapid counteroffensive, Ukraine recaptured much of Kharkiv Province in the northeast of the country in September and also has been making gains in Kherson Province in the south. That advance, which began in late August, has left thousands of Russian troops stationed on the western bank of the Dnipro River in the city of Kherson exposed, and the Ukrainian military authorities on Friday pointed to signs that Moscow was moving military equipment out of the city.
Vladyslav Nazarov, a spokesman for Ukraine’s southern operational command, said at a briefing on Friday, that while Russia was still trying to hold its occupied areas in the province, Moscow’s forces in Kherson were “quite actively transferring equipment, weapons and even units,” to the eastern bank of the river. That claim could not be independently verified.
The Russia-backed authorities in the city said last week that they were launching an operation to evacuate civilians to the river’s east bank before what they said was a likely attack by Ukrainian forces. They encouraged residents to go to Russia and said on Thursday that 15,000 people had been evacuated. It was not possible to confirm the operation independently.
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia announced this month that Russia was annexing Kherson along with three other provinces, a unilateral move that has been denounced as illegal both by the government in Kyiv and the United Nations General Assembly.
