Thousands lose power supply after Russia attacks front-line region, Ukraine says

Nearly 60,000 people were deprived of power supply after Russia’s overnight air attack on Ukraine’s front-line region of Zaporizhzhia, while two people were killed in the southern region of Odesa, the Ukrainian authorities said on Nov 2.

As winter nears, Russia has stepped up missile and drone strikes on Ukraine’s power grid, triggering outages and forcing Kyiv’s emergency crews to race to repair damage and manage rolling blackouts.

The attack on Zaporizhzhia left two people wounded and reduced buildings to rubble, the regional governor, Mr Ivan Federov, said on the Telegram messaging app.

“Crews will restore power as soon as the security situation allows,” Mr Fedorov said on Telegram. He also posted night-time photographs of buildings with facades and windows torn off.

Zaporizhzhia endures near-daily Russian artillery, missile and drone strikes that have destroyed homes, crippled utilities and killed scores of people, as Moscow pressures Ukraine’s defences and disrupts links between the south and the rest of the country.

Russia’s 800 strikes on 18 settlements in the region killed one person and injured three over the 24 hours into the morning of Nov 2, Mr Federov added.

In addition, two people died as a result of Russia’s overnight drone attack on Odesa on Ukraine’s Black Sea coast, Ukraine’s state emergency service said on Telegram.

Separately, the death toll from a Russian air attack that set ablaze a shop in the Dnipropetrovsk region on Nov 1 has risen to four, with those dead including two boys aged 11 and 14, the region’s acting governor said.

There was no immediate comment from Russia about the attacks.

Both sides deny targeting civilians in the war that Russia launched with a full-scale invasion on Ukraine in 2022
, but thousands have been killed in the conflict, the vast majority of them Ukrainian. REUTERS