Officials have reported that a new wave of attacks is targeting the city’s energy infrastructure in thesoutheast as well as in Kharkiv.
Russian missile attacks have reportedly targeted Zaporizhzhia in the southeast and Kharkiv, the second-largest city in Ukraine, officials said.
Friday morning saw at least 17 Russian missile strikes on Zaporizhzhia in the space of an hour, according to the city’s acting mayor, Anatolii Kurtiev, who also noted that the missiles were aimed at energy infrastructure.
Another nighttime attack campaign by Russian forces resulted in the loss of electricity in some areas of Kharkiv.
“The occupiers hit critical infrastructure. There were about 10 explosions,” Kharkiv Governor Oleh Synehubov said on Telegram. “In some regions, there are power cuts. Emergency services are on site.”
There were no immediate words on casualties in either Zaporizhzhia or Kharkiv.
Russian forces have been advancing recently for the first time in half a year, in hard-fought battles that both sides describe as some of the bloodiest of the war.
Despite the fact that millions of people in Ukraine are still without water or electricity, Vladimir Putin has vowed to keep attacking its energy infrastructure.
“Yes we do that.B who started it? “At a Kremlin awards ceremony, the Russian president said.
Criticizing Russian strikes, he declared, “would not interfere with our combat missions.”
Since 10 October, after a string of significant military setbacks, Moscow has been hammering Ukraine’s electrical infrastructure.
Some Western leaders have called the strategy a war crime, because of the huge amount of damage caused to civilian infrastructure.
But President Putin said that growing global criticism would not stop the strikes.
“There’s a lot of noise about our strikes on the energy infrastructure of a neighbouring country. Yes, we do that. But who started it?” he said to recipients of state awards, including the “Hero of Russia” medal.
He said the strikes were in response to a blast on the Russian bridge to annexed Crimea on 8 October. He also accused Ukraine blowing up power lines from the Kursk nuclear power plant and of cutting water supply to Donetsk in eastern Ukraine.
“Not supplying water to a city of more than a million people is an act of genocide,” Mr Putin said, accusing the West of “complete silence” on these claims and of bias against Russia.
Ukrainian Prosecutor-General Andriy Kostin said last month that Russia’s attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure amount to genocide.
The Russian president said that when Moscow responds to Ukrainian aggression “there is uproar and clamour spreading through the whole universe”.
IMAGE SOURCE,REUTERS Image caption, Ukraine is now seeing snow and sub-zero temperatures in many regions, including Kyiv
Ukraine is now seeing snow and sub-zero temperatures in many regions, and millions are without electricity and running water, raising fears people may die of hypothermia.
The country switched to emergency shutdowns to stabilise its power grid after a fresh wave of Russian missile attacks on Monday.
Experts have told the BBC that Russia’s tactic of hitting energy infrastructure is most likely designed to demoralise and terrorise the population, rather than gain any concrete military advantage – a move that would violate international law.
People share wartime survival techniques as Russian missile attacksplunge the nation’s capital into darkness.
If you have no electricity, but don’t want your frozen foods to melt, Anastasiya Zasyadko has a useful life hack for you.
“Put a bottle of water in the freezer when the electricity is on,” the 79-year-old retiree told Al Jazeera.
The ice will take many hours to melt – and keep the freezer, well, frozen.
“The bottle has to be plastic because the glass will crack” when the water freezes, Zasyadko, a former physics teacher, said expertly.
Her experience is first-hand.
She lives in a two-bedroom apartment in a northern Kyiv district of drab concrete buildings surrounded by potholed roads, leafless trees and melting snow.
It had no electricity for more than 24 hours after Wednesday’s shelling of the capital and other Ukrainian cities by Russian cruise missiles.
A Ukrainian woman buys a power bank in the capital, Kyiv [Mansur Mirovalev/Al Jazeera]
Low-tech response
But Zasyadko was ready – and saved several kilogrammes of frozen pork, minced meat and vareniki, the Ukrainian ravioli she cannot live without and made weeks earlier.
On October 10, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a string of attacks to destroy power transmission and heating stations, and damage key infrastructure throughout Ukraine.
Zasyadko was already used to the hours-long blackouts – she, her son and her daughter-in-law have plenty of batteries, two power banks, and flashlights you can attach to your head with elastic bands.
“They make you look like a coal miner and ruin your hairdo,” she pouted.
She also can advise you on how to extend the lifetime of a candle and make it heat your bedroom.
Just put it in a glass jar and fill it with vegetable oil. The light will not die out for 12 hours – as long as you make sure that the jar doesn’t fall and start a fire.
You can also combine the contraption with a “flower pot heater” – an ultimate, low-tech response to the lack of central heating.
Take three ceramic flower pots of different sizes, connect them with a long steel bolt so there are a couple of centimetres between them, and put the structure above the burning candle.
The candle-warmed air will not rise to the ceiling but will heat the pots and raise the temperature by several degrees.
Most of the apartment buildings in Ukraine are heated by Soviet-era power stations that have been largely destroyed by the Russian shelling.
A motorcycle is used as a flashlight at a Kyiv mall [Mansur Mirovalev/Al Jazeera]
The cold has been debilitating.
“I went to bed in a flannel gown, put the hood and two pairs of socks on,” Zasyadko said.
Wednesday’s attack was especially devastating for Kyivans because it damaged the water supply in the entire capital and made people buy bottled water, ration it and collect porous snow.
The lack of water is worse than any blackout, Zasyadko said, especially when your family members need to flush the toilet.
Kyiv, howhow to extend the lifetime of a candleever, is already covered with several centimetres of snow, and her son Konstantin collected some in tin buckets and melted it on a gas stove.
“Otherwise it will take hours to melt,” she said.
‘I weep every time’
With the news reports about the deaths of civilians, including a newborn killed by a Russian missile in the eastern town of Vilniansk on Wednesday, Zasyadko has not been feeling well.
That is why she took a seat on a bench in a shopping mall in northern Kyiv, waiting for her daughter-in-law to come back from a grocery shop.
The daughter-in-law, Maryana, showed up with two heavy bags – and offered the ultimate advice on patience.
“As long as everyone in our family is alive, we keep thanking God,” the 45-year-old cook said.
“I weep every time I hear about those little kids killed by the bloody Rashists,” she said, using a derogatory term that combines “Russian” and “fascist”.
Just a few metres away, a wartime generation of Ukrainian mall rats is glued to their mobile phone screens. The mall has its own power generator – and offers a chance to reload batteries free of charge.
Dozens of people sit or stand next to power sockets – and many are teenagers with more than one gadget.
Most of the sockets are in drafty, barely lit halls, but there are some in the warmer corridors leading to public toilets.
Denys Kyrilenko, 19, was standing close to a ladies’ room, but paid no attention to the women passing by. The university student was typing a text message to his girlfriend who fled to Poland with her family in early March.
He cannot join her because Ukrainian men aged 18 to 60 are not allowed to leave the country. But the eight-months-long separation only made their feelings stronger, he said.
“War makes you see things better,” he said.
Denys Kyrilenko texts his girlfriend from a mall in Kyiv [Mansur Mirovalev/Al Jazeera]
The mall is an oasis of carefree consumerism. And it offers things that have become essential and life-saving.
A small crowd stood around a kiosk with power banks, connecting cables and USB-powered flashlights.
The salesman, Andriy Shevchenko, patiently explained why even the largest power bank in his kiosk cannot be used to power a laptop.
The customers, two women in their early 20s, nodded and bought one anyway – even though the price was almost $80.
That’s not Shevshenko’s fault.
“I hate when suppliers raise prices,” he said. “It ruins my reputation.”
‘We can withstand anything’
Kyiv residents living in private houses with firewood-fuelled stoves feel safe and privileged.
Many stockpiled hundreds of kilogrammes of firewood – and use the stoves to slow-cook their food in metal containers or pots.
And one house owner shared his observation on the resilience of fellow Ukrainians around him.
On Wednesday, Mykhailo Gorshenin, who lives in a two-storey house in northeastern Kyiv, saw how a Russian cruise missile hit a transmission station.
“People came out of a store to take a look,” he said.
Within seconds, another missile hit the same spot.
“They started filming the fire and the smoke with their cell phones,” he said.
Ukrainian officials have reported that Russia has launched massive missile strikes across Ukraine, including the capital Kyiv, causing power and water outages.
At least two explosions have been reported in Kyiv. One resident told the BBC that his neighbourhood was now without power.
According to local authorities, critical infrastructure facilities in the northeastern city of Kharkiv were hit.
The strikes follow Russia’s accusation that Ukraine was responsible for a drone attack on its Black Sea Fleet in annexed Crimea.
On Monday morning, missile strikes were also reported in the central Vinnytsia region, as well as Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhia in the southeast, and Lviv in western Ukraine.
A facility at the Dnipro hydroelectric power plant in the Zaporizhzhia region was also reportedly hit.
In Kyiv, a facility that powers 350,000 apartments was damaged, with engineers urgently deployed to restore the supply.
Residents in the regions under attack were urged to remain in shelters, amid fears more strikes could follow.
Ukraine’s Air Force spokesman Yuriy Ihnat told Ukrainian TV that Russia had used its strategic bombers to carry out its “massive” strikes.
Andriy Yermak, the head of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s office, said that “Russian losers are continuing to fight against peaceful objects”.
IMAGE SOURCE, UKRAINE’S DIGITALISATION MINISTRY Image caption, All of Ukraine’s regions – except for the annexed Crimea in the south – were marked in red as being under air attack on Monday morning
Russia has so far made no public comments on the reported latest strikes.
On Saturday, one Russian warship was damaged in the port city of Sevastopol in a drone attack, the Russian defence ministry said. It also accused British specialists of having trained the Ukrainian soldiers who then carried out the strikes in Crimea – Ukraine’s southern peninsula, annexed by Russia in 2014.
Moscow provided no evidence to back its claims.
Ukraine has not commented on the issue, while the UK defence ministry said Russia was “peddling false claims on an epic scale“.
In Germany, officials say they’re planning to send Ukraine new air defence systems.
Known as IRIS-T SLMs, they’re used to “protect the population, important buildings, objects as well as ground troops against attacks from the air”, according to Diehl BGT Defence, their manufacturer.
This is exactly the sort of system Ukraine has been asking for since the beginning of this conflict.
The system uses GPS and INS navigation, and receives frequent target positional data from its base station, guiding it toward the threat.
It also has an infrared seeker as an additional feature and is effective against helicopters, aircraft, cruise missiles, air-to-surface weapons, and anti-ship weapons. Crucial to all this is how many will be delivered – and when. It’s all part of the gradual Westernisation of Ukraine’s armed forces, following Russia’s invasion in February.
Currently, Ukraine has Soviet-era surface-to-air (SAM) systems, comprising S-300 for long-range and Buk-M1 SAMs for shorter-range. The German systemwould be a significant upgrade.
The US has provided the greatest amount of weaponry so far – totalling more than $17bn (£15bn), while the UK has supplied the country with the Starstreak anti-aircraft missile system, and other systems, as part of an assistance package worth £2.3bn.
DISCLAIMER: Independentghana.com will not be liable for any inaccuracies contained in this article. The views expressed in the article are solely those of the author’s, and do not reflect those of The Independent Ghana
The thermal generation and electrical substations were struck by today’s missile strikes, according to the Ukrainian ministry of energy, which means that starting tomorrow, it will no longer be able to supply electricity to the European Union.
The interruption will help Ukraine stabilise its own energy system, the ministry said in a statement on its website.
Ukraine started exporting power to the European Union on 1 July. At the time, President Volodymir Zelensky said the launching of power transmissions was the start of a processthat could help Europe reduce its dependence on Russian hydrocarbons, Reuters reported then.
The recent volley of missile launches, according to North Korea, was a “simulation” of a nuclear strike on the South.
It occurs at a time when intelligence reports suggest North Korea is getting ready to conduct its first nuclear test in five years.
Pyongyang has fired seven sets of missiles in recent weeks in retaliation for the US and South Korean military exercises.
On Monday, state media published extensive reports claiming the missiles were designed to carry nuclear weapons.
They said the military practised loading the missiles with tactical nuclear warheads, which are small short-range weapons aimed for use on the battlefield.
They also claimed to have successfullysimulated hitting South Korea’s military bases, ports and airports, and said the launches were a warning to US and South Korea.
State news agency KNCA ran photos of leader Kim Jong-un overseeing and “guiding” the tests.
IMAGE SOURCE,KCNA/REUTERS Image caption, State media also published several pictures of Kim Jong-un presiding over the missile launches
US and South Korean intelligence officials have been suggesting that the North may soon test a nuclear weapon for the first time since 2017.
Experts believe it could also use the opportunity to detonate a smaller tactical device for the first time – the sort which would fit into the missiles it has been testing.
Last month North Korea revised its nuclear laws, expanding the range of scenarios in which it could deploy nuclear weapons. Mr Kim also declared North Korea an “irreversible” nuclear power.
It has also markedly stepped up its frequency of missile firings this year, carrying out over 40 missile launches this year so far – its most ever.
Most of the launches in the past fortnight have been short-range missiles, which landed in the sea between North Korea and Japan.
But North Korea also fired a longer-distance missile over Japan last Tuesday– which analysts say is a new intermediate-range ballistic missile, based on the weapon’s design.
This year has seen the North test-fire missiles from a variety of launch sites including trains and convoys – moving platforms which would make it harder for the weapons to be destroyed in a strike, analysts have suggested.
They also noted that Monday’s state media reports framed the recent launches as “tactical nuclear operations units” – instead of describing them purely as missile tests – suggesting that North Korea has now developed a system for deploying nuclear weapons.
The 25 September-October 9 barrage were a response to the US deploying its nuclear-powered aircraft carrier the USS Ronald Reagan to waters around the Korean peninsula, and holding joint drills with Seoul and Tokyo.
The acceleration marks a significant change from when Pyongyang pursued denuclearisation talks with then US President Donald Trumpbetween 2018 and 2019.
Analysts say North Korea is also reacting in response to South Korea’s President Yoon Suk-yeol, who was elected in May and has pursued a more hawkish stance to the North and closer ties with the US.
North Korea’s recent launches
Sunday 25 September: A short-range missile fired the day after a US naval carrier arrived in waters around the Korean peninsula. 600km distance/60km altitude
Wednesday 28 September: Two short-range missiles fired on the eve of US Vice President Kamala Harris’ visit to Seoul and the DMZ. 360km distance/30km altitude
Thursday 29 September: Two short-range missiles after Harris departed South Korea. 300km distance/50km altitude
