Russia strikes Ukrainian energy facilities with missiles and drones

Russian airstrikes have cut power and water to repeatedly bombed Ukrainian cities and destroyed energy and infrastructure elsewhere in the country.

The attacks appear to be part of an accelerated Russian effort to drive the Ukrainians into the cold and darkness.

Mayor Serhiy Sukhomlyn said the city of Zhitomyr, which has a military base 85 miles west of the capital, lost power to the entire city after a double missile attack on an energy facility. Hospitals can only run on backup power.

The missile attack also hit an energy facility in Kyiv and severely damaged another in the south-central city of Dnipro.

In addition to missiles, Russia is also mixing its attack methods.

The regional governor said suicide drones — so-called because they hit their targets and exploded — ignited an infrastructure in the partially Russian-occupied southern Zaporozhye region.

As stocks are running out, anti-aircraft S-300 missiles, which Russia has been using as a ground attack weapon, were used to attack the southern city of Mykolaiv, killing a man whose body was found in the rubble of a two-story building found, the region’s governor said.

In the eastern city of Kharkiv, rockets were used to attack an industrial area. The region’s governor said the eight rockets were launched from the nearby border with Russia.

A large number of suicide drones laden with explosives also hit Kyiv on Monday, hitting energy facilities and catching fire, collapsing some buildings. A drone crashed into a four-story residential building, killing four people.

Ukraine says Russia is getting thousands of drones from Iran. The Iranian-made Shahed drone swooped into its target with explosives in Kyiv on Monday and has been widely used elsewhere in recent weeks.

In the past week alone, more than 100 drones have attacked power plants, sewage treatment plants, residential buildings, bridges and other targets in urban areas, Ukraine’s foreign ministry said.

Russia is using kamikaze drones because it is losing the war, now approaching its eighth full month, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a televised address Monday night.

“Russia has no chance on the battlefield and is trying to compensate for its military failures with terror,” he said. “Why this terror? Pressure on us, on Europe, on the whole world.”