Beautiful Virgin Islands

Thursday, Oct 09, 2025

Russia Destroys Energy, Water Infrastructure Across Ukraine

Russia Destroys Energy, Water Infrastructure Across Ukraine

Russia-Ukraine War: Missiles struck power stations in the capital Kyiv where they killed three people, and in Kharkiv in the east, Dnipro and Kryvyi Rih in the south and Zhytomyr in the west.

Russia has destroyed almost a third of Ukraine's power stations in the past week, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Tuesday, as Moscow rained more missiles down on infrastructure in what Kyiv and the West call a campaign to intimidate civilians.

Missiles struck power stations in the capital Kyiv where they killed three people, and in Kharkiv in the east, Dnipro and Kryvyi Rih in the south and Zhytomyr in the west, causing blackouts and knocking out water supplies. One man was killed in his flat that was destroyed in Mykolaiv in the south.

Russia has openly acknowledged targeting Ukraine's energy infrastructure with waves of missile and drone strikes since the start of last week, in what President Vladimir Putin said was legitimate retaliation for a blast on a bridge.

Kyiv and the West say intentionally attacking civilian infrastructure is a war crime, and the attacks, aimed at leaving Ukrainians with no heat and power as winter arrives, are Putin's latest tactic to escalate a war his forces are losing.

"The situation is critical now across the country ... The whole country needs to prepare for electricity, water and heating outages," Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the Ukrainian president's office, told Ukrainian television.

In Mykolaiv, Reuters heard three explosions in the early hours of Tuesday. A missile completely destroyed one wing of a building in the downtown area, leaving a massive crater. A fire crew was seen pulling the dead body of a man from the rubble.

The Russians "probably get pleasure from this," said Oleksandr, the owner of a nearby flower shop.

Zelenskiy said Russia was continuing to try to terrorise and kill Ukrainian civilians.

"Since Oct 10, 30% of Ukraine's power stations have been destroyed, causing massive blackouts across the country," he wrote on Twitter.

Zelenskiy reiterated his refusal to negotiate with Putin who he says heads a "terrorist state".

Zelenskiy ruled out negotiations with Putin last month after the Russian leader announced the annexation of four Ukrainian provinces. Putin has also called up hundreds of thousands of reservists and repeatedly threatened to use nuclear weapons since mid-September, after his forces faced humiliating battlefield losses.

'Kamikaze Drones'


There was no immediate word on how many people had been killed in Tuesday's strikes overall. A day earlier, Russia sent swarms of drones to attack infrastructure in Kyiv and other cities, killing at least five people.

Moscow denies deliberately targeting civilians, though it has pummelled villages, towns and cities across Ukraine in what it initially called a "special military operation" to disarm its neighbour.

The Russian defence ministry repeated earlier statements that it was carrying out attacks using high precision weapons on what it described as military targets and energy infrastructure across Ukraine.

Ukraine accuses Russia of using Iran-made Shahed-136 'kamikaze drones', which fly to their target and detonate. Iran denies supplying them and on Tuesday the Kremlin also denied using them.

However, two senior Iranian officials and two Iranian diplomats told Reuters that Tehran had promised to provide Russia with more drones as well as surface-to-surface missiles, a move sure to infuriate the United States and its allies.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said he would ask Zelenskiy to formally cut diplomatic ties with Iran in protest over the drones. "The actions of Iran are vile and deceitful," he said.

NATO will deliver air defence systems to Ukraine "in the coming days" to help the country defend itself against drones, the alliance's secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg said.

'General Armageddon'


Russia earlier this month named General Sergei Surovikin as overall commander of Moscow's forces in Ukraine. Surovikin, nicknamed "General Armageddon" in Russian media, served in Syria and Chechnya where Russian forces pounded cities to rubble in a brutal but effective scorched earth policy against its foes.

His appointment was quickly followed on Oct. 10 by the biggest wave of missile strikes against Ukraine since the start of the war.

Putin cast those strikes as revenge for an explosion that damaged Russia's bridge to Crimea - the peninsula Moscow seized from Ukraine in 2014. Kyiv has not claimed responsibility for that attack but celebrated the destruction of what it considers a military target used to transport arms and troops.

British Armed Forces minister James Heappey told BBC Radio that Surovikin was pursuing a cruel and pointless strategy that he said would fail in its aim of trying to "break the will of the Ukrainian people".

The Kremlin said on Tuesday that four Ukrainian regions it claims to have annexed in recent weeks were under the protection of its nuclear arsenal.

The statement comes as both NATO and Russia prepare to hold annual military exercises to test the readiness of their nuclear weapons forces. Russia's defence ministry said on Tuesday two of its nuclear-capable Tu-95MS strategic bombers had conducted a flight of more than 12 hours over the Pacific Ocean, the Bering Sea and the Sea of Okhotsk.

Putin has previously said he is prepared to use nuclear weapons if necessary to defend Russia's "territorial integrity".

The governors of Russia's Kursk and Belgorod regions, which border Ukraine, on Tuesday reported cross-border shelling.

In Belgorod, a train station was shelled and train links suspended, and two villages were shelled in Kursk, leading to electricity outages, they said.

Newsletter

Related Articles

Beautiful Virgin Islands
0:00
0:00
Close
China Unveils Sweeping Rare Earth Export Controls to Shield ‘National Security’
The Davos Set in Decline: Why the World Economic Forum’s Power Must Be Challenged
France: Less Than a Month After His Appointment, the New French Prime Minister Resigns
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán stated that Hungary will not adopt the euro because the European Union is falling apart.
Sarah Mullally Becomes First Woman Appointed Archbishop of Canterbury
Mayor in western Germany in intensive care after stabbing
Australian government pays Deloitte nearly half a million dollars for a report built on fabricated quotes, fake citations, and AI-generated nonsense.
US Prosecutors Gained Legal Approval to Hack Telegram Servers
Macron Faces Intensifying Pressure to Resign or Trigger New Elections Amid France’s Political Turmoil
Standard Chartered Names Roberto Hoornweg as Sole Head of Corporate & Investment Banking
UK Asylum Housing Firm Faces Backlash Over £187 Million Profits and Poor Living Conditions
UK Police Crack Major Gang in Smuggling of up to 40,000 Stolen Phones to China
BYD’s UK Sales Soar Nearly Nine-Fold, Making Britain Its Biggest Market Outside China
Trump Proposes Farm Bailout from Tariff Revenues Amid Backlash from Other Industries
FIFA Accuses Malaysia of Forging Citizenship Documents, Suspends Seven Footballers
Latvia to Bar Tourist and Occasional Buses to Russia and Belarus Until 2026
A Dollar Coin Featuring Trump’s Portrait Expected to Be Issued Next Year
Australia Orders X to Block Murder Videos, Citing Online Safety and Public Exposure
Three Scientists Awarded Nobel Prize in Medicine for Discovery of Immune Self-Tolerance Mechanism
OpenAI and AMD Forge Landmark AI-Chip Alliance with Equity Option
Munich Airport Reopens After Second Drone Shutdown
France Names New Government Amid Political Crisis
Trump Stands Firm in Shutdown Showdown and Declares War on Drug Cartels — Turning Crisis into Opportunity
Surge of U.S. Billionaires Transforms London’s Peninsula Apartments into Ultra-Luxury Stronghold
Pro Europe and Anti-War Babiš Poised to Return to Power After Czech Parliamentary Vote
Jeff Bezos Calls AI Surge a ‘Good’ Bubble, Urges Focus on Lasting Innovation
Japan’s Ruling Party Chooses Sanae Takaichi, Clearing Path to First Female Prime Minister
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Sentenced to Fifty Months in Prison Following Prostitution Conviction
Taylor Swift’s ‘Showgirl’ Launch Extends Billion-Dollar Empire
Trump Administration Launches “TrumpRx” Plan to Enable Direct Drug Sales at Deep Discounts
Trump Announces Intention to Impose 100 Percent Tariff on Foreign-Made Films
Altman Says GPT-5 Already Outpaces Him, Warns AI Could Automate 40% of Work
Singapore and Hong Kong Vie to Dominate Asia’s Rising Gold Trade
Trump Organization Teams with Saudi Developer on $1 Billion Trump Plaza in Jeddah
Manhattan Sees Surge in Office-to-Housing Conversions, Highest Since 2008
Switzerland and U.S. Issue Joint Assurance Against Currency Manipulation
Electronic Arts to Be Taken Private in Historic $55 Billion Buyout
Thomas Jacob Sanford Named as Suspect in Deadly Michigan Church Shooting and Arson
Russian Research Vessel 'Yantar' Tracked Mapping Europe’s Subsea Cables, Raising Security Alarms
New York Man Arrested After On-Air Confession to 2017 Parents’ Murders
U.S. Defense Chief Orders Sudden Summit of Hundreds of Generals and Admirals
Global Cruise Industry Posts Dramatic Comeback with 34.6 Million Passengers in 2024
Trump Claims FBI Planted 274 Agents at Capitol Riot, Citing Unverified Reports
India: Internet Suspended in Bareilly Amid Communal Clashes Between Muslims and Hindus
Supreme Court Extends Freeze on Nearly $5 Billion in U.S. Foreign Aid at Trump’s Request
Archaeologists Recover Statues and Temples from 2,000-Year-Old Sunken City off Alexandria
China Deploys 2,000 Workers to Spain to Build Major EV Battery Factory, Raising European Dependence
Speed Takes Over: How Drive-Through Coffee Chains Are Rewriting U.S. Coffee Culture
U.S. Demands Brussels Scrutinize Digital Rules to Prevent Bias Against American Tech
Ringo Starr Champions Enduring Beatles Legacy While Debuting Las Vegas Art Show
×