Russia launched a widespread attack on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure overnight, forcing the country to implement emergency power outages, Ukrainian authorities said on Friday.
“The enemy continues its terror. Once again, the energy sector across Ukraine is under massive attack,” Ukrainian energy minister German Halushchenko said on his official Facebook page.
The extent of the damage had yet to be clarified, he said, while urging people to remain in shelters.
Streets in the capital Kyiv remained largely empty Friday morning as Ukraine’s air force warned of the threat of ballistic and cruise missiles potentially targeting parts of the country.
Ukrenergo, Ukraine’s energy grid operator, said power facilities in several regions were damaged and it was introducing emergency power outages across the country. Russia has launched 12 “massive” attacks on Ukraine’s power system so far this year, Ukrenergo said.
Moscow’s forces have intensified bombardments of Ukraine in recent months, leaving the country in a precarious position as the war grinds into its third winter.
Last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened to strike Ukraine again with a new nuclear-capable ballistic missile following a widespread attack on critical energy infrastructure that left more than a million households in Ukraine without power.
Russia’s latest assault comes after Moscow vowed on Thursday to respond to a Ukrainian attack on a city in southwest Russia, which Russia claimed involved six US-made ATACMS ballistic missiles.
Ukraine acknowledged making “tangible hits on Russian targets” Wednesday, including military and energy facilities, but has not said what type of missiles were used.
Meanwhile, Russia continues its ground assault on the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine, advancing in the areas surrounding Kurakhove and Pokrovsk, according to reports from the ground and the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a Washington-based think tank.
The Russian defense ministry claimed on Friday that it had captured Zarya village, to the south of the key eastern city of Pokrovsk.
Russian forces are just three kilometers (1.9 miles) from the outskirts of Pokrovsk after making advances Wednesday, the Ukrainian mapping service DeepState said earlier this week.
“The losses of the Russian occupiers in the Pokrovsk direction are consistently high, especially in manpower,” Ukraine’s commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said Friday. He also acknowledged that “for several months now, the Pokrovsk direction has been one of the most difficult in the context of the confrontation with the Russian occupiers.”
NATO calls for shift to ‘wartime mindset’
NATO head Mark Rutte on Thursday called for a shift to a wartime mindset – with much higher defense spending – warning the US-led transatlantic alliance that it was not ready for the threats it would face from Russia in the coming years, Reuters reported.
Rutte said future spending would have to be much higher than the current alliance target of 2 percent of national wealth as measured by gross domestic product (GDP).
“During the Cold War, Europeans spent far more than 3 percent of their GDP on defense,” Rutte said in a speech in Brussels. “We are going to need a lot more than 2 percent.”
“Russia is preparing for long-term confrontation, with Ukraine and with us,” Rutte said. “It is time to shift to a wartime mindset, and turbocharge our defense production and defense spending.”
His comments come as US President-elect Donald Trump has called for allies to spend 3 percent of GDP on defense.
The US on Thursday announced a $500 million aid package for Ukraine in the coming days that will pull equipment out of US military stocks.
The Biden administration is working to surge deliveries of weapons to Ukraine in its final days in office in a concerted effort to put Kyiv on a strong footing going into 2025, according to a senior administration official.
In November, Biden authorized Ukraine to use powerful long-range American weapons inside Russia. Kyiv has used the newly granted powers to fire US-made ATACMS missiles at Russian targets across the border on multiple occasions.
Trump has said he “vehemently” disagrees with allowing Ukraine to use US-provided weapons to strike inside Russia, and that by doing so the US is “escalating this war and making it worse.”
On Friday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov lauded his comments, saying Moscow has the same view of the causes leading to the escalation of the conflict.
When asked about Russia’s hopes for the war to end after Trump takes office, Peskov said in a press briefing that the Kremlin will wait and see after the inauguration.
CNN’s Sophie Tanno and Anna Chernova contributed to this report.
