Feb 12 (Reuters) – Russia pounded Ukraine with drones and ballistic missiles overnight on Thursday, further battering its energy system and leaving tens of thousands in the capital Kyiv and the cities of Dnipro and Odesa without heat, \u200cpower and water, officials said.<\/p>\n
Russia has intensified its winter campaign of strikes on Ukraine’s power grid, plunging major cities \u200cinto long periods of cold and darkness in freezing temperatures.<\/p>\n
In Kyiv alone, around 3,500 apartment buildings were without heating on Thursday after the latest attack knocked out supplies \u200bto nearly 2,600 high-rises, on top of the 1,100 already affected by previous strikes, said Mayor Vitali Klitschko.<\/p>\n
More than 100,000 families were without electricity, according to private energy firm DTEK, which said one of its thermal power plants had been targeted but did not disclose the location.<\/p>\n
Two people were hurt in the attack on Kyiv, which also hit a residential building, Klitschko said.<\/p>\n
Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched 24 \u200cballistic missiles, one cruise missile and 219 drones \u2060overnight. Air defences downed or neutralised 16 missiles and 197 drones, it said.<\/p>\n
KEY CITIES OF ODESA, DNIPRO ALSO HIT<\/p>\n
The Black Sea port of Odesa was hit twice in less than 24 hours.<\/p>\n
Late on Thursday, regional \u2060governor Oleh Kiper said a second wave of drone strikes had damaged houses and industrial sites and energy infrastructure. Kiper said the attack had disrupted electricity, heating and water supplies.<\/p>\n
Deputy Prime Minister Oleksiy Kuleba had earlier said an initial wave of attacks had left nearly 300,000 people without \u200bwater \u200bas the attack disrupted power supplies in the city. Close to 200 \u200bbuildings in the port city were left without heating.<\/p>\n
Military \u200cadministration chief Serhiy Lysak said the attack also damaged an apartment building and sparked a fire that engulfed one of the city’s markets, injuring one person.<\/p>\n
In the industrial southeastern city of Dnipro, a combined missile and drone strike wounded four people, including a baby boy and a four-year-old girl, regional governor Oleksandr Ganzha said on Telegram.<\/p>\n
Two people were killed and six more wounded in an attack on the railway hub of Lozova in the northeastern Kharkiv region bordering Russia, prosecutors said.<\/p>\n
Moscow has denied intentionally targeting civilians during the war \u200calthough its attacks have killed thousands of them since it invaded at full \u200bscale in February 2022. Ukraine has also hit civilian targets in Russia or \u200bRussian-occupied parts of Ukraine during the war, though on \u200ba far smaller scale.<\/p>\n
‘BLOW TO PEACE EFFORTS’<\/p>\n
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha condemned the attack as undermining a peace \u200cpush led by U.S. President Donald Trump to end \u200bthe four-year war.<\/p>\n
U.S.-backed trilateral talks between \u200bUkraine and Russia have so far failed to resolve key differences between the two sides, while Moscow has pressed on with a battlefield offensive and attacks on Ukrainian cities.<\/p>\n
“Each such strike is a blow to peace efforts aimed at ending \u200bthe war. Russia must be forced to take \u200cdiplomacy seriously and de-escalate,” Sybiha wrote on X.<\/p>\n
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Wednesday the U.S. needed to \u200bput more pressure on Russia if it wanted the war to end by summer.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Anna Pruchnicka, Ron Popeski \u200band Valentyn Ogirenko; Editing by Michael Perry, Ros Russell and Stephen Coates)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Feb 12 (Reuters) – Russia pounded Ukraine with drones and ballistic missiles overnight on Thursday, further battering its…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":586137,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5],"tags":[106313,253842,253843,18298,50,59144,57399,257,165531,56466,32547,103],"class_list":["post-586136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world","tag-apartment-buildings","tag-ballistic-missiles","tag-drone-strike","tag-drone-strikes","tag-news","tag-power-grid","tag-power-supplies","tag-russia","tag-tens-of-thousands","tag-ukraine-and-russia","tag-vitali-klitschko","tag-world"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116061203961583425","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=586136"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586136\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/586137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=586136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=586136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=586136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}