‘Massive’ Russian attack on Ukraine kills at least six, damages power sites

Key points

• Russian air attacks killed at least six people in Ukraine and left hundreds of thousands without power.
• Moscow said it struck energy and communications infrastructure, including plants in Kyiv and Kharkiv.
• Zelenskyy said Ukraine received no early warning from Western partners about the ballistic missiles.

Russian air attacks have killed at least six people in Ukraine and left hundreds of thousands without power, days after United States President Donald Trump announced an "energy ceasefire" in the more-than four year war.

Russia's Defence Ministry said on Wednesday that its forces had carried out a "massive" strike against communications and energy infrastructure facilities in Ukraine, according to the Interfax news agency. It said Russian forces hit two plants supplying power and heating in Kyiv, two other plants in the wider region and an electricity substation.

Strikes across several regions

Other targets included a heating and power plant in Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, and a thermal power facility that the ministry said supplied the Ukrainian military in the southeast of the Kharkiv region. Moscow said its forces also hit a data centre in Kyiv which it said was used to gather intelligence on Russia's military.

DTEK, Ukraine's largest private energy provider, said the attack caused emergency power cuts in several urban districts of Kyiv. A Russian strike on a multistorey building in the capital's Desnianskyi district killed two people, while another attack in Golosiivsky district killed one, Ukraine's state emergency service said. The Ukrainian military reported two people killed and six wounded in the Dnipropetrovsk region, and another person killed in the southeastern Zaporizhzhia region. Further Russian missile attacks were reported in the Kharkiv and Zhytomyr regions, while other strikes hit Sumy and Chernihiv.

Over half a million people in Ukraine are without power as a result of these strikes

— Al Jazeera's Audrey MacAlpine

What officials said

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko urged people to remain in shelters. "Energy facilities in Kyiv and the surrounding region have come under a massive ballistic missile strike. There are power disruptions in the capital," he wrote on Telegram.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine received no warnings from its Western partners of a Russian ballistic missile attack on the capital, raising questions about intelligence sharing. He said Ukraine detected the missiles only as they neared Kyiv and accused Russia of violating the "energy ceasefire" Trump announced on Sunday. A technology adviser to the president, Sergiy Beskrestnov, said the operation of some Starlink internet terminals appeared to have been restricted overnight, preventing its military-grade version from operating above 160 kilometres per hour.