Russian strikes leave about 850,000 without power in Ukraine as winter closes in

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Russian strikes on Ukraine's energy network left about 850,000 people without electricity on Sunday, as the country heads into another wartime winter with temperatures already around freezing. More than 600,000 residents of the Dnipropetrovsk region lost power after overnight strikes damaged key energy facilities, according to the power company DTEK, and nearly 250,000 customers in the Kharkiv region were cut off after a drone hit critical infrastructure.

DTEK said on Telegram that a night attack had damaged important energy facilities in Dnipropetrovsk and that repairs were being complicated by repeated strikes. In Kharkiv, the mayor of Zlatopil, Mykola Baksheyev, said a Russian drone had hit a critical infrastructure facility and that nearly 250,000 customers were without power, with no date given for full restoration. The outages reached the city of Dnipro and the Pavlohrad, Samarivskyi and Kamianske districts.

The blackouts followed a heavier wave a day earlier, when Ukraine's energy ministry said a large attack on energy facilities had left residents in five regions without power and badly disrupted electricity transmission in Kyiv. Ukraine's air force said Russia launched 164 drones, including 112 jet-powered ones, and three guided missiles overnight, and that defences shot down or suppressed 137 of them. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia had also launched a drone at Komyshuvakha, the village where a Russian strike on an aid centre killed dozens earlier in the week.

The numbers here come from Ukrainian sources and carry that limit. The outage figures are from DTEK and a local mayor, and the interception figures are from Ukraine's air force; none has been independently verified. Russia's defence ministry said its forces hit a power substation in the Zhytomyr region and a container ship near Odesa, claims that also could not be independently verified. Zelenskyy accused Moscow of stepping up the attacks to put pressure on Kyiv before US-brokered talks in Abu Dhabi — that is his reading of Russian intent, not a documented Russian statement. In the same address he said Russia had launched 115 missiles, nearly 1,900 guided bombs and more than 3,000 attack drones against Ukraine in the week before 8 November.

The timing is what makes the outages land hard. The trilateral talks in Abu Dhabi open on Tuesday, 10 November, with post-war security arrangements, de-escalation and humanitarian steps on the agenda. Ukraine's grid operator has set hourly power restrictions in several regions, and officials have given no date for full restoration in the worst-hit areas. Kyiv is entering its fifth wartime winter with every power plant damaged, according to Zelenskyy, and the coming days will show whether the grid holds or the blackouts widen.