Russian airstrikes targeting energy and other facilities rocked Ukraine from east to west on Tuesday, causing widespread blackouts. A senior official warned the situation was “critical” and urged Ukrainians to “hang in there” as neighborhoods darkened. The airstrike, which resulted in at least one death in a residential building in the capital, Kyiv, followed days of euphoria in Ukraine that sparked one of its biggest military successes in the nearly nine-month war — last week’s recapture of the southern city of Kherson . At least a dozen districts reported strikes, which prompted multiple emergency shutdowns. A Ukrainian air force spokesman said Russia fired about 100 missiles. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy put the number at 85. Zelensky warned that more attacks could come, but defiantly promised, with a shake of his fist: “We will survive everything.” A senior official, Kirill Tymoshenko, said the barrage was “another planned attack on energy infrastructure facilities”. “Most of the strikes were recorded in the center and north of the country. In the capital, the situation is very difficult,” Tymoshenko wrote on Telegram. It was difficult elsewhere. As battlefield casualties mount, Russia in recent months has increasingly resorted to targeting Ukraine’s power grid, apparently hoping to turn the approach of winter into a weapon by leaving people in the cold and dark. As city after city reported attacks, Tymoshenko appealed to Ukrainians to stay put and acknowledged the gravity of the situation. Among the areas where officials reported strikes were Lviv, Zhytomyr, Khmelnytskyi and Rivne in the west and Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, in the northeast. Several rocket attacks also hit Kryvyi Rih, Zelensky’s hometown, according to Mayor Oleksandr Vilkul. In Kyiv, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said authorities found a body in one of three residential buildings hit in the capital, where emergency power outages were announced by power company DTEK. Video released by a presidential aide shows a five-story, apparently residential building in Kyiv burning, with flames licking up the apartments. Klitschko said air defense units also shot down some missiles. Ukraine had seen a period of comparative calm since previous waves of drone and missile attacks several weeks ago. The strikes came as authorities were already working frantically to get Kherson back on its feet and begin investigating alleged Russian abuses there and around it. The southern city is without electricity and water, and the head of the UN human rights office’s monitoring mission in Ukraine, Matilda Bogner, on Tuesday denounced a “terrible humanitarian situation” there. Speaking from Kyiv, Bogner said her teams want to travel to Kherson to try to verify allegations of nearly 80 cases of enforced disappearances and arbitrary detentions that have occurred in the region and “find out if the scale is actually bigger than that that we have has already been documented.” Ukraine’s National Police chief Igor Klymenko said authorities are to begin investigating reports from residents of Kherson that Russian forces have set up at least three alleged torture sites in now-liberated areas of the greater Kherson region and that “our people can to have been held and tortured there.” “The clearance of minefields is underway. After that, I think, today investigative actions will begin,” he told Ukrainian television. The recapture of Kherson was one of Ukraine’s biggest successes in the nearly nine-month Russian invasion and dealt another stinging blow to the Kremlin. But large parts of eastern and southern Ukraine remain under Russian control and fighting continues. Zelensky on Tuesday likened the recapture of Kherson to the Allied landings in France on D-Day in World War II, saying both were milestones on the road to final victory. “It is like, for example, D-Day — the landing of the Allies in Normandy. It was not yet an end point in the fight against evil, but it had already determined the entire further course of events. That is exactly what we are feeling now,” he told a video camera at a Group of 20 summit in Indonesia. The liberation of Kherson — the only provincial capital Moscow had captured — had sparked days of celebration in Ukraine and allowed families to be reunited for the first time in months. But as winter approaches, the city’s remaining 80,000 residents are without heat, water or electricity, and lack food and medicine. However, US President Joe Biden called it a “significant victory” for Ukraine. Speaking on the sidelines of the G20 summit, Biden added: “We will continue to provide the Ukrainian people with the ability to defend themselves.” Zelensky warned of possible bleaker news ahead. “Everywhere, when we liberate our land, we see one thing — Russia is leaving behind torture chambers and mass graves… How many mass graves are there in the territory that still remains under Russian control?” Zelensky asked. —— Joanna Kozlowska in London and Jamey Keaten in Geneva contributed to this story.
