‘Massive’ Russian attack on Ukraine kills at least six, cuts power in Kyiv

Russian air attacks have killed at least six people in Ukraine and left hundreds of thousands without power, days after United States President Donald Trump announced an “energy ceasefire” in the more-than four year war.

The ⁠Russian Defence Ministry said on Wednesday that its forces had carried out a “massive” strike ‌against communications and energy infrastructure facilities ⁠in Ukraine, the Interfax ⁠news ⁠agency reported.

In a statement, it said Russian forces targeted two heat ⁠and power plants in the capital Kyiv, ⁠another such plant in the wider Kyiv region along with a thermal power plant and an electricity substation.

Other targets included ⁠a heat and power plant in Kharkiv along with a ⁠thermal power plant which it ⁠said supplied the Ukrainian military in the southeast of the Kharkiv region.

The ministry said it had also hit a data ‌centre in Kyiv which it said was used to gather intelligence on Russia’s armed forces.

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko urged people to remain in shelters.

“Energy facilities in Kyiv and the surrounding region have come under a massive ballistic missile strike. There are power disruptions in the capital,” he wrote on Telegram.

DTEK, Ukraine’s largest private energy provider, said the attack had caused emergency power cuts in several urban districts of Kyiv.

A Russian strike on a multistorey building in the capital’s Desnianskyi district killed two people, while another attack in Golosiivsky district killed one, Ukraine’s state emergency service said.

The Ukrainian military also reported that two people were killed and six wounded in Russian attacks on the Dnipropetrovsk region. Another person was killed in the southeastern Zaporizhzhia region.

Further Russian missile attacks were reported in the Kharkiv and Zhytomyr regions, while other strikes hit Sumy and Chernigiv.

Al Jazeera’s Audrey MacAlpine, reporting from Kyiv, said a record number of hypersonic missiles were used in the attacks on the capital.

“Over half a million people in Ukraine are without power as a result of these strikes,” she said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russian attacks on Kyiv had come without Ukraine receiving advance warning from its Western allies.

“A Russian ballistic missile attack on Kyiv. Once again, no early warning from our partners,” he wrote on Facebook. “This is absolutely unjust: when they are destroying our infrastructure, and Ukraine is not even receiving early warnings about ballistic missile launches.”

The president said Ukraine detected the missiles only as they neared Kyiv.

He also accused Russia of violating the “energy ceasefire” Trump announced on Sunday.

“A targeted Russian ballistic missile strike specifically against energy infrastructure – the very infrastructure covered by the ceasefire announced by the American President,” he wrote on X.

“The strike was entirely deliberate and demonstrative in its scale – Russia has never before shown such ostentatious disrespect toward the United States.”

A technology adviser to the Ukrainian president said the operation of some Starlink internet terminals appeared to have been restricted overnight, stopping the operation of its military-grade version above 160 kilometres per hour, disrupting combat missions.

“Tonight SpaceX introduced a speed limit for the Starlink terminals in motion,” Sergiy Beskrestnov said, referring to Elon Musk’s company, which owns Starlink.

“Our defence forces were not warned about this restriction, which led to the disruption of a number of missions. Obviously, this action cannot be a coincidence and is linked to the current political situation.”

Russia also reported Ukrainian drone strikes overnight. The governor of Russia’s Saratov region, Roman Busargin, said a Ukrainian drone strike had killed one person in the city of Balakovo.

Busargin said all ⁠infrastructure ⁠facilities were operating as usual. Balakovo is home ⁠to a data centre of Russia’s ⁠top lender Sberbank, a ⁠nuclear power ⁠plant and a hydropower station, whose dam spans ‌the Volga River, among other facilities.

Sberbank later ⁠said ⁠its data centre ‌in the Saratov region had been attacked by ⁠drones, but that ⁠all systems ⁠were operating ⁠as ⁠normal.

Moscow mayor Sergey Sobyanin said air defence forces had downed nearly 500 drones flying towards the Russian capital overnight. Russian authorities said about 160 more were brought down over the Rostov region, while others targeted Moscow.

Russia’s military later put the number of downed Ukrainian drones overnight at 902, of which 180 were shot down near the capital Moscow.