Russian drone attack on Ukraine power grid leaves hundreds of thousands without electricity for second day

Hundreds of thousands of people in southern Ukraine had no electricity for a second day after another Russian drone attack on the country’s power grid, as Ukrainian officials claimed that a rocket strike on the occupied city of Melitopol killed and injured many Russian troops.

Heavy fighting continued around the town of Bakhmut in the Donetsk region over the weekend, and Kyiv and Moscow accused each other’s forces of shelling residential areas in eastern and southeastern Ukraine as torrential rain turned the frontline into a quagmire.

“Power is gradually returning to Odesa and the bulk of Odesa region. Of the 1.5 million people who were without electricity yesterday, today this number has decreased to 300,000 customers. Tomorrow we also expect a significant improvement in the situation,” regional governor Maksym Marchenko said on Sunday.

Odesa city mayor Gennadiy Trukhanov said the power situation was “constantly changing. The main task is to maintain critical infrastructure – water, heat and the operation of pumping stations and boiler houses.”

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“Regarding water supply: we are currently restarting the pumping stations. It takes time. Where there has been no water since yesterday, we are delivering it in trucks,” he explained, adding that about a third of the city’s 140 boiler houses were out of action.

Invincibility points

Mr Trukhanov urged local residents to make use of so-called invincibility points – help stations, usually set up inside large tents, where people can get water, warm up, charge phones and go online when power is off in their apartments.

“Yesterday alone, they were visited by more than 15,000 people,” he said on Sunday, describing the situation in the Black Sea port city as “fully under control, but not easy”.

The Ukrainian military said Russia launched 15 explosive “kamikaze” drones towards targets in Odesa and neighbouring Mykolaiv region, 10 of which were shot down by the country’s air defences, which have been significantly strengthened by western-supplied systems.

Kyiv and its allies say Iran is supplying the drones to Moscow, and Britain warns that Russia is also seeking to acquire ballistic missiles from Tehran, as its own stocks become depleted after nearly 10 months of daily strikes on towns and cities across Ukraine.

Russia denies buying drones from Iran and rejects allegations that its attacks on critical infrastructure are war crimes, arguing instead that it is striking targets that power Ukraine’s war effort.

Widespread destruction

Ukrainian officials said a rocket attack late on Saturday night destroyed a Russian base in the occupied southeastern city of Melitopol, citing reports from locals that more than 200 of Moscow’s troops were killed or injured in the strike.

Video posted online appeared to show widespread destruction and many bodies in the burning ruins of the building, but Russian officials said only two people were killed and 10 hurt in what it called an attack on a civilian target.

Melitopol is located north of occupied Crimea and about 230km east of Kherson city – which Ukraine liberated last month – and a similar distance west of the devastated Russian-held port of Mariupol.

“All logistics linking the Russian forces in the eastern part of the Kherson region and all the way to the Russian border near Mariupol is carried out through it,” Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said of Melitopol.

“If Melitopol falls, the entire (Russian) defence line all the way to Kherson collapses. Ukrainian forces gain a direct route to Crimea,” he added.

Mr Zelenskiy spoke to French counterpart Emmanuel Macron on Sunday about issues including “co-operation on defence and energy stability of Ukraine”, and both the Ukrainian leader and Russian president Vladimir Putin discussed the war and related issues with Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan.