Russian attacks on Ukraine over the past eight days have destroyed 30% of the country’s power stations, causing “massive blackouts across the country,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky tweeted on Tuesday.
Driving the news: Russia has stepped up its attacks since Oct. 10, when Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a missile bombardment on Kyiv and cities across Ukraine in retaliation for the explosion of a bridge linking mainland Russia with occupied Crimea — which Moscow blamed on Ukrainian forces.
- Zelensky wrote in a Telegram post Monday that kamikaze drones and missiles were “attacking all of Ukraine.”
The big picture: Zelensky described the attacks on energy and critical infrastructure as “another kind of Russian terrorist attacks,” adding that there is “no space left for negotiations with Putin’s regime.”
- Two people died in a Russian missile attack on an energy supply facility in Kyiv on Tuesday, Ukraine’s prosecutor general’s office wrote in a Telegram post.
- Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko wrote in a Telegram post that two critical infrastructure facilities were damaged by Russian missiles and urged residents to save water and electricity.
- “The provision of electricity and water supply services is partially limited in many houses on the left bank of the capital,” he added.
State of play: Kyiv residents lined up at grocery stores on Tuesday to stock up on water and other supplies in anticipation of further blackouts, the New York Times reported.
- The cities of Zhytomyr, west of Kyiv, and Dnipro were also experiencing water and electricity outages on Tuesday as a result of Russian strikes, CNN reported.
