Kiev, Ukraine — A A Russian drone crashed into an apartment building in eastern Ukraine early Saturday while many slept, killing three people and wounding 12 others, Ukrainian authorities said.
The attack in Dnipro, Ukraine’s fourth-largest city, was part of a major Russian missile and drone barrage across the country that targeted energy infrastructure and also killed a worker at an energy company in Kharkiv, further north, a local official said.A fire broke out and several apartments were destroyed in the nine-storey building in Dnipro, emergency services said. Rescuers recovered the bodies of three people, while two children were among the injured.
Russia fired a total of 458 drones and 45 missiles, including 32 ballistic missiles. Ukrainian forces shot down and neutralized 406 drones and nine missiles, the air force said, adding that 25 locations were hit.
Authorities cut power in several regions because of the attacks, Ukraine’s Energy Minister Svitlana Grynchuk said in a post on Facebook.
Fighting is underway in Eastern Ukraine the strategic city of Pokrovsk has reached a key stage, with both Kiev and Moscow competing to convince US President Donald Trump that they can win on the battlefield.
Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Saturday that work has begun on President Vladimir Putin’s order to prepare plans a possible Russian nuclear testThis was reported by state news agency Tass.
Putin’s order on Wednesday followed Trump’s statementswhich seemed to suggest that Washington would resume its own nuclear tests for the first time in three decades. At a news briefing on Saturday, Lavrov said Russia had not received any clarification from the US about its intentions.
Energy sites attacked
Russia bombards Ukraine with almost daily drone and missile attacks, killing and wounding civilians. The Kremlin says its only targets are linked to Kiev’s war efforts. The Russian Defense Ministry claimed on Saturday that the overnight attacks hit military and energy sites that supply the Ukrainian armed forces.
Moscow and Kiev have exchanged attacks on each other’s energy targets on an almost daily basis US-led diplomatic efforts to stop the almost four years’ war had no influence on the battlefield.
Ukraine’s long-range drones about Russian refineries are intended to give Moscow the income from oil exports it must continue the war. Russia wants that cripple Ukraine’s power grid and denying citizens access to heat, light and running water in what Kiev officials say is an attempt to “weaponize winter.”
Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said in an X post that the attacks damaged “several major energy facilities” around Kharkiv and Kiev, as well as in the central Poltava region. An energy company employee was killed in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, regional head Oleh Syniehubov said in a message on Telegram.
“We are working to eliminate the consequences of the attacks throughout the country. The focus is on the rapid restoration of heating, electricity and water supply,” Svyrydenko added.
Thermal power plants of the Ukrainian state energy company Centrenergo have been taken offline again due to the overnight strikes, the company said in a statement on Saturday. Centrenergo’s three factories in the Kiev, Kharkiv and Donetsk regions were damaged by Russian attacks last year and subsequently repaired.
The same plants that were targeted and restored last year were hit again “every minute” by Russian drones, the company said. Russian forces have meanwhile repelled a “massive” nighttime attack on energy facilities in the southern Volgograd region, Governor Andrei Bocharov said on Saturday, two days after Ukraine said it hit an important oil refinery there with long-range drones. Bocharov added that the strike knocked out power in parts of the region’s northwest but caused no casualties. There was no immediate comment from Kiev.
The Russian Defense Ministry said on Saturday that its forces shot down 82 Ukrainian drones overnight, including eight over the Volgograd region. Two people were injured in the neighboring Saratov region after a Ukrainian drone strike blew out windows in an apartment building, according to regional governor Roman Busarin.
Russian oil
After weeks of long-range attacks on Russia’s energy infrastructure, which Ukraine says is both financing and directly fueling the Kremlin’s war, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky vowed Friday to “find a way to ensure that there is no Russian oil in Europe.”
Zelenskyy spoke to reporters shortly after Hungary secured a waiver from recent US sanctions on major Russian oil producers.
“We will not allow it. We will not allow the Russians to sell oil there. It is a matter of time,” he said at a news briefing after a meeting with senior Ukrainian military leaders, without explaining how Kiev might try to stem the oil flows.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, a Trump ally who has long urged the European Union to restore ties with Moscow, says landlocked Hungary has no viable alternatives to Russian crude and that replacing those supplies would trigger an economic collapse. Critics disputes that claim.
The Trump Administration Revealed sanctions against major Russian oil companies Rosneft and Lukoil last month, a move that could expose their foreign buyers – including customers in Central Europe, India and China – to secondary sanctions.
While most of the EU’s 27 member states have sharply reduced or halted imports of Russian fossil fuels after Moscow’s widespread invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Hungary and Slovakia maintained their pipeline deliveries. Hungary has even increased the share of Russian oil in its energy mix.
Fighting for Pokrovsk
The city of Pokrovsk is located along the eastern front line, part of what is called the “fortress belt” of Donetska line of heavily fortified cities crucial to Ukraine’s defense in the region. It could also be a key point in influencing Washington’s position and influencing the course of peace negotiations, analysts say.
Putin says his forces are about to win. He demands this as a condition for peace Ukraine cedes the Donbasconsisting of Donetsk and neighboring Luhansk.
Russian forces advanced near Pokrovsk and the nearby city of Myrnohrad on Saturday and said both were surrounded, according to the Russian Defense Ministry. It also said Russian forces surrounded Ukrainian defenders in Kupiansk, a key railway hub in the northeastern Kharkiv region.
Kiev did not immediately respond to Moscow’s statements, which could not be independently verified. Ukrainian officials have previously acknowledged that the situation in Pokrovsk is dire. But they said there was no blockade either there or in Kupiansk, and the fighting continued.
Joanna Kozlowska reported from London.
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