Ukraine-Russia war: missiles, exploding drones again hit the might of Ukraine, water

Kyiv, Ukraine — Airstrikes on Tuesday cut power and water supplies in a repeatedly bombed Ukrainian city and destroyed critical power plants elsewhere, part of what the Ukrainian president denounced as an accelerated Russian campaign to force Ukrainians into the cold and darkness and make peace talks impossible .

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said nearly a third of Ukraine’s power plants were destroyed in the past week, “resulting in massive power outages across the country.”

“No more room for negotiations with Putin’s regime,” he tweeted.

The campaign of attacks using missiles, drones and other weapons has opened a new phase in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s nearly eight-month invasion as winter begins to bite. Even far from battlefields, water, heating and electricity are no longer certainties, with daily strikes reaching far into the country to destroy utilities, sometimes faster than they can be repaired.

The last town to lose power and water was Zhytomyr, home to military bases, industries, leafy boulevards and about 250,000 people, about 140 kilometers (85 miles) west of the capital Kyiv.

City and region officials said hospitals in Zhytomyr had to run on emergency power after a twin missile attack targeted a power plant on Tuesday, and that other settlements in the area also lost power.

Two power plants in Kyiv were damaged by rocket attacks, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said. The attacks killed one person and injured six others, he said.

In addition to missiles, Russia mixes up its attack methods.

Suicide drones — so called because they hit targets and explode — set fire to an infrastructure facility in the partially Russian-occupied southern Zaporizhia region, the regional governor said.

S-300 air defense missiles, which Russia has repurposed as ground attack weapons as its stockpiles are depleted, were used to attack the southern city of Mykolaiv, killing a man whose body was found in the rubble of a two-story building. said the governor of the region.

In the eastern city of Kharkiv, an industrial area was hit with rockets. The regional governor said the eight missiles were fired from across the nearby border with Russia.

Waves of suicide drones loaded with explosives also hit Kyiv on Monday, hitting power plants and setting buildings on fire and partially collapsing them. A drone crashed into a four-story apartment building, killing four people.

Ukraine says Russia is getting thousands of drones from Iran. The Iranian-made Shahed drones that dived into targets in Kyiv with their explosive charges on Monday have also been widely deployed elsewhere in recent weeks.

In the past week alone, more than 100 drones have hit power plants, sewage treatment plants, residential buildings, bridges and other targets in urban areas, Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry said.

In a televised address Monday night, Zelenskyy said Russia was using kamikaze drones because it was losing ground in the war.

“Russia has no chance on the battlefield and is trying to compensate for its military defeats with terror,” he said. “Why this terror? To put pressure on us, on Europe, on the whole world.”