Kyiv, Ukraine — Russia on Wednesday launched a major ballistic and cruise missile attack on regions across Ukraine, targeting energy production and compelling authorities to shut down the power grid in some areas despite freezing winter weather, officials said.
The Russian Defense Ministry said that it launched a strike on “critically important facilities of gas and energy infrastructure that ensure the functioning of Ukraine’s military industrial complex.” It didn’t give the target locations or other details.
The barrage came a day after the Russian Defense Ministry vowed a response to what it said was an attack on Russian soil using multiple Western-supplied missiles. Kyiv hasn’t confirmed that attack, though it said Tuesday that it hit an oil refinery and a fuel storage depot, a chemical plant producing ammunition and two anti-aircraft missile systems, in a missile and drone attack that reached almost 700 miles into Russia.
Long-range attacks have been a feature of the nearly three-year war, where on the front line snaking about 600 miles from northeast to southern Ukraine, the armies have been engaged in a war of attrition. Russia has been advancing on the battlefield over the past year, though its progress has been slow and costly.
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Russia attacked Ukraine with 43 missiles and 74 drones overnight, the Ukrainian Air Force said. A total of 30 missiles and 47 drones were shot down, and 27 drones failed to reach their target, it said.
The Russian missiles sought out targets from the Lviv region in western Ukraine near Poland to Kharkiv in northeast Ukraine bordering Russia. The state energy company Ukrenergo reported emergency power outages in six regions. It often shuts down production during attacks as a precaution.
“The enemy continues to terrorize Ukrainians,” Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko wrote on Facebook.
Electricity supplies resumed to households in some areas by the middle of the day, but Ukrenergo urged customers to avoid using power-hungry electrical appliances.
Russia has repeatedly tried to cripple Ukraine’s power grid, denying the country heat, electricity and running water in an effort to break the Ukrainian spirit. The attacks have also sought to disrupt Ukraine’s defense manufacturing industry.
Last September, the U.N. refugee agency reported that Ukraine had lost more than an estimated 60% of its energy generation capacity.
Ukrainian authorities try to rebuild their power generation after the attack, though the barrages have eroded production. Western partners have been helping Ukraine rebuild.
“It is the middle of the winter, and Russia’s goal remains unchanged: our energy infrastructure,” Zelenskyy said on Telegram.
He urged Western partners to accelerate the delivery to Ukraine of promised air defense weapons, emphasizing that “promises have been made but not yet fully realized.”
Poland vows to push forward Ukraine’s EU membership quest
Separately, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk vowed on Wednesday to use his country’s presidency of the European Union to push forward with Ukraine’s membership quest.
“We will break the standstill we have in this issue,” Tusk told reporters in Warsaw, as he stood alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. “We will accelerate the accession process.”
Zelenskyy was in Poland on Wednesday after the two countries reached an agreement on the exhumation of Polish victims of World War II-era massacres by Ukrainian nationalists, a longstanding source of tensions between them.