Russia is stepping up its attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure in a bid to cut electricity and heating in the country as winter approaches, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Saturday.
His remarks come as Moscow intensifies its attacks on civilian targets in the capital, Kyiv, and elsewhere, with key observers saying its objective is to render the country virtually unlivable.
What did Zelenskyy say?
In a post on social media platform X, Zelenskyy said Russia had just carried out one of its biggest attacks on Ukraine's energy sector since it began its full-scale invasion of its neighbor in February 2022.
"More than 15 critical power generation and transmission facilities were targeted across different regions of Ukraine," he wrote.
"Restoration work is ongoing, with all necessary services and all available resources of Ukrainian energy companies involved," he added.
Zelenskyy said that Russia was planning to leave Ukrainian citizens in the cold this winter.
"Russia is trying to cause a blackout in Ukraine — right before winter. Russia is trying to leave millions of our people without electricity and heating," he wrote, calling on allies to put pressure on Moscow to stop this happening.
He said Russia had "expanded its campaign against the energy system" and was trying "to stretch Ukraine's reserves and repair capacity as thinly as possible."
Russia claims multiple infrastructure attacks
The Russian Defense Ministry, for its part, said on Saturday that its forces had attacked several infrastructure targets in Ukraine overnight.
Among those named was an electricity substation in the northwestern city of Zhytomyr.
However, it also said Ukraine's largest steelworks, in the city of Kryvyi Rih, had been hit, saying the facility supplied steel products to the Ukrainian military-industrial complex.
It said another steel plant in Zaporizhzhia, a city near the front line, had also been struck.
Ukrainian authorities have also said that one person — an ambulance driver — was killed and 19 others injured, including a child, in a Russian airstrike on Kherson in southern Ukraine.
Russian state news agency TASS has also reported the death of one woman as a result of Ukrainian drone strikes in Russia's Belgorod region that also injured a man.
Trump's sanctions waiver a boost for Putin: Zelenskyy
Meanwhile, Zelenskyy also reacted to US President Donald Trump's decision to waive a package of new sanctions on Moscow, saying the move would only encourage Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
"A US sanctions blackout, easing pressure on the aggressor, financial rewards for Putin — all of this only encourages him to keep attacking," Zelenskyy said.
On Friday, Trump signed an executive order that waived sweeping US sanctions and tariffs targeting Russia's energy revenues, two days before they were due to take effect.
The waiver has been hailed by a Russian presidential envoy as a "historic moment."
"The Trump administration's suspension of the [Lindsey] Graham Act is an important and truly historic moment," Kirill Dmitriev said on social media.
Dmitriev said the act, named for the late US senator who sponsored the bill, "would have caused "serious damage first and foremost to the US economy and global markets."
Trump's move came as he increasingly criticizes Zelenskyy, fueling speculation that the US leader is siding with Moscow in the conflict.
Edited by: Karl Sexton
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