Drone over Ukraine
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russian drone strikes had left 1.5 million people without electricity in the Odessa region of southern Ukraine.
Zelensky noted that ten Iranian-made drones were shot down during a Russian raid on Friday night, while five other planes could not be shot down, causing severe damage to energy infrastructure.
The Ukrainian president praised the repair crews for their work, which Zelensky called heroic, at the same time warning that the process of restoring the electricity supply could take days.
The Odessa electricity authority said it could take weeks or even three months to fix the faults.
“After a nightly raid by Iranian drones, Odessa and other cities and villages in the region are in darkness,” Zelensky said.
“Now, there are more than 1.5 million people in the Odessa region without electricity,” he added.
Deputy head of the Ukrainian presidential administration Kyrylo Tymoshenko noted that only the necessary infrastructure related to hospitals and maternity wards was supplied with electricity.
Tymoshenko said the situation “is still difficult, but it’s under control.”
The Black Sea resort of Odessa was a favorite holiday destination for many Ukrainians and Russians before Russian President Vladimir Putin’s forces invaded pro-Western Ukraine on 24 February.
Maxim Marchenko, governor of Odessa, said Russia attacked the city at night with “kamikaze drones… As a result of the raid, there is no electricity in most districts of the city”.
Marchenko added that Ukrainian air defense units managed to shoot down two drones.
image copyright TELEGRAM
The wreckage of a kamikaze drone
The Ukrainian capital, Kiev, announced on Friday that the war-torn country’s southern regions, including Odessa, were suffering the worst blackouts, days after Russia’s systematic raids on Ukraine’s power grid.
And on Monday, Russia bombed key infrastructure in Ukraine with dozens of cruise missiles, adding pressure to a network already battered by repeated attacks.
Russia has begun targeting Ukrainian infrastructure after its forces suffered humiliating military defeats at the hands of the Ukrainian resistance.
And on Thursday, Putin vowed to continue targeting Ukraine’s power grid, despite protests over the attacks that have left millions in the dark.
