Ukraine yesterday warned of an emerging “critical” risk to its power grid after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that repeated Russian bombardments had destroyed one-third of the nation’s power facilities as winter approaches.
That warning came as Russian forces claimed to have retaken territory from Ukrainian troops in the eastern Kharkiv region, Moscow’s first announced capture of a village there since being nearly entirely pushed out of the region last month.
At the same time, Russian attacks rocked energy facilities in Kyiv and urban centers across the nation, causing blackouts and disrupting water supplies, just one day after the capital was bombarded with a swarm of suicide drones.
Photo: AFP
“The situation is critical now across the country because our regions are dependent on one another... It’s necessary for the whole country to prepare for electricity, water and heating outages,” Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the Ukrainian president’s office, told Ukrainian television.
The strikes in the early hours yesterday hit Kyiv, Kharkiv in the east, Mykolaiv in the south, and central regions of Dnipro and Zhytomyr, where officials said hospitals were running on backup generators.
Drones also bombarded Kyiv on Monday leaving five dead, officials said, in what the presidency described as an attack of desperation.
Photo: AFP
It was the second Monday in a row that Russia launched punitive strikes which military observers have said appear to be Moscow’s response to battlefield losses.
Zelenskiy described the repeated targeting of energy infrastructure as “another kind of Russian terrorist attacks.”
“Since October 10, 30 percent of Ukraine’s power stations have been destroyed, causing massive blackouts across the country,” he wrote on Twitter.
He said the attack meant that there was “no space left for negotiations with [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s regime.”
Following the wave of kamikaze drone attacks against Kyiv on Monday, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kuleba demanded EU sanctions on Iran, accusing Tehran of providing Russia with drones.
The Kremlin yesterday said that it has no knowledge of its army using Iranian drones in Ukraine.
“Russian tech is being used,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, referring other questions to the Russian Ministry of Defense.
Separately, Russia yesterday said a “technical malfunction” probably caused a Russian warplane to crash into a block of flats in Yeysk, near Ukraine, killing at least 13 people, including three children.
Investigators said they were questioning the pilots of the Sukhoi Su-34, who managed to parachute out of the plane before it crashed on Monday into the nine-story building, engulfing it in flames.
Nineteen people were injured, four of them critically.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday said it is closely monitoring developments in Venezuela, and would continue to cooperate with democratic allies and work together for regional and global security, stability, and prosperity. The remarks came after the US on Saturday launched a series of airstrikes in Venezuela and kidnapped Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, who was later flown to New York along with his wife. The pair face US charges related to drug trafficking and alleged cooperation with gangs designated as terrorist organizations. Maduro has denied the allegations. The ministry said that it is closely monitoring the political and economic situation
Conflict with Taiwan could leave China with “massive economic disruption, catastrophic military losses, significant social unrest, and devastating sanctions,” a US think tank said in a report released on Monday. The German Marshall Fund released a report titled If China Attacks Taiwan: The Consequences for China of “Minor Conflict” and “Major War” Scenarios. The report details the “massive” economic, military, social and international costs to China in the event of a minor conflict or major war with Taiwan, estimating that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) could sustain losses of more than half of its active-duty ground forces, including 100,000 troops. Understanding Chinese
UNRELENTING: China attempted cyberattacks on Taiwan’s critical infrastructure 2.63 million times per day last year, up from 1.23 million in 2023, the NSB said China’s cyberarmy has long engaged in cyberattacks against Taiwan’s critical infrastructure, employing diverse and evolving tactics, the National Security Bureau (NSB) said yesterday, adding that cyberattacks on critical energy infrastructure last year increased 10-fold compared with the previous year. The NSB yesterday released a report titled Analysis on China’s Cyber Threats to Taiwan’s Critical Infrastructure in 2025, outlining the number of cyberattacks, major tactics and hacker groups. Taiwan’s national intelligence community identified a large number of cybersecurity incidents last year, the bureau said in a statement. China’s cyberarmy last year launched an average of 2.63 million intrusion attempts per day targeting Taiwan’s critical
‘SLICING METHOD’: In the event of a blockade, the China Coast Guard would intercept Taiwanese ships while its navy would seek to deter foreign intervention China’s military drills around Taiwan this week signaled potential strategies to cut the nation off from energy supplies and foreign military assistance, a US think tank report said. The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) conducted what it called “Justice Mission 2025” exercises from Monday to Tuesday in five maritime zones and airspace around Taiwan, calling them a warning to “Taiwanese independence” forces. In a report released on Wednesday, the Institute for the Study of War said the exercises effectively simulated blocking shipping routes to major port cities, including Kaohsiung, Keelung and Hualien. Taiwan would be highly vulnerable under such a blockade, because it
RSS