KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian attacks left more than 100,000 households in northern Ukraine without power overnight and cut off water supplies to a regional capital, Ukrainian authorities said Saturday, as civilian casualties rose sharply in the country’s besieged east.
The northern Sumy region, which borders Russia, was plunged into darkness after Russian strikes damaged energy infrastructure Friday night, Ukraine’s energy ministry said. Hours later, Ukrainian public broadcaster reported that Russian drones had struck the provincial capital, also called Sumy, cutting off water by hitting power lines that supply the pumping system.
Russia’s state agency RIA quoted a local pro-Kremlin “underground” leader as saying that Moscow forces had attacked a factory producing rocket ammunition overnight in the city, which had a pre-war population of more than 256,000. The report did not specify what weapon was used and the claim could not be independently verified. Explosions rocked the city during an air raid warning early Saturday, according to Ukrainian media.
In the eastern Donetsk region, Russian shelling killed 11 civilians and wounded 43 on Friday and overnight, local governor Vadym Filashkin said on Saturday. Five people died in the town of Selydove southeast of Pokrovsk, the eastern city that has become a frontline hotspot. Ukraine’s General Staff said on Saturday morning that Ukrainian and Russian troops had clashed 45 times near Pokrovsk the previous day.
Filashkin said three more people died in Khasiv Yar, the strategically located town in Donetsk that was left in ruins after a month-long Russian attack.
A Ukrainian military spokesman said Thursday told the AP that Ukrainian troops had withdrawn from a neighborhood on the outskirts of Khasiv Yar. The city’s high elevation gives it strategic importance, and military analysts say its fall would endanger nearby cities. It could also jeopardize critical Ukrainian supply routes and bring Russia closer to its stated goal of seizing the entire Donetsk region.
According to the Ukrainian General Staff, Russian forces carried out six rocket attacks and 55 airstrikes in Ukraine on Friday and overnight, and deployed more than 70 missiles. “glide bombs” — modified Soviet-era weapons that have wreaked havoc across the country in recent weeks.
In Russia, two civilians were injured after Ukrainian forces shelled a border town in the southern Belgorod region overnight, Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said.
The Russian Defense Ministry reported that its forces shot down a total of eight drones overnight over the Kursk and Belgorod regions in the south.
In Krasnodar Province, next to Russian-annexed Crimea, local authorities reported damage caused overnight by falling drone debris. The debris caused a fire at an oil depot, set fuel tanks alight at another location and damaged a mobile phone tower, the reports said. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
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