(Kyiv) Russian strikes left three dead and around forty injured on Saturday in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second city which is very regularly bombed, the authorities announced, after a night already marked by a “massive” attack against the fragile energy system of the country.
The Russian army struck this town, very close to its border, using “guided aerial bombs”, weapons with devastating force, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Telegram.
Three people died and a residential building was hit, he said, adding that searches were continuing in the rubble.
The governor of the Kharkiv region, Oleg Synegoubov, said 37 people had been injured, four of whom were “in serious condition.”
A gutted building with blown out windows was visible in a video accompanying Volodymyr Zelensky’s message. Pieces of furniture and metal were scattered on the sidewalk alongside it, where a large hole indicated the probable impact of a bomb.
The city of Kharkiv is often bereaved by Russian attacks. At the beginning of May, Moscow launched a surprise ground offensive in its region, and the fighting there remains violent.
Russia said it aimed to create a buffer zone to better defend its territory from strikes by Kyiv, particularly the Belgorod region, which borders Kharkiv.
A civilian was killed there by a Ukrainian strike on a farm, its governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said on Saturday.
Ukraine, for its part, claims that it is striking Russian territory in this region to protect itself.
During the night, the Ukrainian energy network, already in difficulty, was the target of a new large-scale Russian attack.
Facilities of Ukrenergo, a Ukrainian operator, were “damaged” in the regions of Zaporizhia (south) and Lviv (west), the Ukrainian Energy Ministry said.
Ukrenergo said two of its employees were injured and hospitalized in Zaporizhzhia.
According to the ministry, this is the eighth “massive” attack on Ukrainian power plants in the past three months, leading to frequent power outages as the power grid struggles to withstand targeted strikes by the Russians.
The Russian Defense Ministry said on Saturday it had carried out a “grouped strike” against Ukrainian energy facilities, “in response” to Kyiv’s attacks on its own territory.
On Thursday, energy infrastructure, including a power station, had already been damaged by a major Russian nighttime attack.
Russia, by increasing its attacks, has destroyed half of Ukraine’s energy capacity, according to Mr. Zelensky.
Ukrenergo announced that nationwide power outages would begin earlier than usual on Saturday, between 7 a.m. ET and 5 p.m. ET, due to damage caused by the attacks .
The general director of the operator DTEK, Maxime Timchenko, had warned that Ukraine risked being “faced with a serious crisis this winter” if its Western partners did not mobilize.
Kyiv is urging them to help rebuild its electricity network, a project that requires significant investment, and to provide it with more air defense equipment to counter Russian bombings.
In the east of the country, five civilians were killed by Russian shelling in the past 24 hours in frontline areas in the Donetsk region, its governor, Vadym Filashkin, said.
In the occupied part of this mining region, of which Russia claims annexation, three people were killed and four injured on Saturday in several Ukrainian strikes in Donetsk and Gorlivka, according to the head of the Russian occupation of the region, Denis Pushilin.
In recent months, the Russian army has continued to advance there in the face of a Ukrainian army lacking men and ammunition.
Moscow is still trying to gain ground and is deploying “significant forces” in areas near Pokrovsk and Toretsk, where intense clashes took place on Saturday, the Ukrainian military said.
The Russian occupation authorities in the Zaporizhia region also claimed that Ukrainian attacks had damaged a substation of the city’s nuclear power plant, controlled by Russian troops, while assuring that nuclear security was not compromised. affected.