UKRAINIAN OFFICIALS SAY the power supply is being gradually restored across the war-torn country, a day after devastating Russian air strikes targeted its energy infrastructure.
Some ten million Ukrainians were left without electricity when dozens of Russian missiles hit power stations in the biggest aerial attack since the Russian invasion began in February.
Fresh air raid alerts were sounding again across the country today, raising concerns over new attacks, but the warnings were lifted in the capital Kyiv minutes after.
“After yesterday’s rocket strikes, I was informed in the morning that most of the subscribers were reconnected,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said on social media.
“Our engineers and rescuers worked all night in different regions,” he said, vowing to “defeat all enemies”.
The deputy head of Zelensky’s office, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, specified that energy supplies have been fully restored in eight regions, mostly in western and central Ukraine.
In Kyiv, city military administration head, Sergiy Popko, said on Telegram that “thanks to the well-coordinated work of engineers and employees of all public utilities … the power supply for critical infrastructure facilities has been restored.”
The mayor of the western city of Lviv, Andriy Sadovyi, also reported that “power has been restored throughout almost the entire city”.
“There are isolated reports of houses where there is no electricity yet. We are working on it,” he said on social media.
On Tuesday, the Russian strikes also triggered automatic shutdowns of several reactors at two nuclear power plants as Moscow and Kyiv have traded blame for attacks near several nuclear plants in Ukraine.
Meanwhile, the Belgian defence minister has said yesterday’s explosion that killed two Polish civilians in a village near the Ukraine border was probably caused by Ukrainian air defence units firing at incoming Russian missiles.
“The missile strikes in Poland last night are being fully investigated by our intelligence service, which is in close contact with NATO partner services,” Ludivine Dedonder said in a statement.
“Based on the preliminary information available, the strikes are most likely a result of Ukrainian anti-aircraft systems that were engaged to take Russian missiles out of the sky.”
Russia also said that images published from the site of a blast in Poland showed fragments of a Ukrainian missile, and that Moscow’s nearest strike on Ukraine was 35 kilometres (20 miles) from the Polish border.
“Photographs of the wreckage… were unequivocally identified by Russian military experts as fragments of a guided anti-aircraft missile of a Ukrainian S-300 air defence system,” the Russian defence ministry said in a statement.
“Precision strikes were carried out on targets only on the territory of Ukraine and at a distance of no closer than 35 kilometres from the Ukrainian-Polish border,” it added.
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