Ukraine war briefing: Russia pounds power grid with seven killed in biggest energy attack in months

Russia has unleashed a widely anticipated air campaign against Ukraine’s energy grid, hitting power facilities and infrastructure ⁠around Kyiv and other regions in the ⁠heaviest combined attack on energy sites in ​months. The strikes on Wednesday, in which Ukrainian officials said seven people were killed, came after days of intensifying drone barrages primarily on the capital, a prelude to what many Ukrainians expect to be a winter of attacks intended to plunge cities into cold and darkness while Ukraine is short ⁠of air defences. State power grid operator Ukrenergo said it had imposed emergency power cuts as a result of the attack in Kyiv and three surrounding regions – the first time such a measure had been imposed in the capital since the spring.

“Russia has escalated to massive ‌strikes on energy infrastructure,” the prime minister, Sergii Koretskyi, said ‌on X after the overnight attacks. A child was among the seven dead across Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said, with critical infrastructure coming under attack in five regions. Further damage was reported in another five regions, the Ukrainian president added. Forecasters say they expect freezing temperatures at night in Kyiv in coming days.

Zelenskyy visited a military command post near the town of Lyman near the eastern frontline and praised what he said were gains against Russian forces ‌during a counteroffensive. Ukrainian forces had recaptured 176 sq km (29.3 sq miles) of territory since the start of the operation, he said. “A serious ‌operation, important in many ways for our ‌defence overall and in Donbas in particular,” Zelenskyy wrote, referring to eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region, which Russia aims to capture in its entirety. Zelenskyy said the operation had ‌prevented Russian forces from breaking through the rear of defensive lines around Sloviansk ​and Kramatorsk, part of the network of “fortress cities” Ukrainian forces are defending.

Ukraine is urging the US to impose sanctions on several Russian entities it says are helping develop Moscow’s Rassvet satellite network as a domestic alternative to SpaceX’s Starlink, its acting ⁠ambassador said. Denys Sienik, ⁠deputy chief of mission ​at the Ukrainian embassy in Washington, said Russia was rapidly expanding the Rassvet satellite network and that its goal to start operations in 2027 would pose grave risks to Ukraine. Kyiv planned to issue its own national sanctions against the entities linked to the ​network, Sienik said, adding: “If these entities are not sanctioned, it ‌will actually make this program possible for ‌Russia and that will be a gamechanger.”

Papal envoy Cardinal Matteo Zuppi discussed humanitarian issues in the Ukraine war in ⁠talks with Russian officials and visited Ukrainian prisoners of war, Russia’s foreign ministry said. Zuppi’s three ⁠days of talks ⁠coincided ​with an appeal by Pope Leo to Russia and Ukraine to sit down and discuss how to ⁠end the four-and-a-half-year war. The pontiff also decried national leaders who he said were “beginning to speak about nuclear weapons ⁠and wars that are becoming ever more destructive”. The foreign ministry said ​on Wednesday that Zuppi also discussed conditions in the Russian-occupied town of Oleshky in Ukraine’s Kherson region, where Ukrainian officials said Kyiv’s military used drones last weekend to deliver ‌food and medicine to civilians.