Ukraine accuses Russia of attacking power grid in revenge for offensive

Ukraine accused the Russian military of attacking civilian infrastructure in response to a rapid last offensive by Ukrainian troops that forced Russia to abandon its main bastion in the Kharkiv region.

Ukrainian officials said the targets of the retaliatory attacks included water facilities and a thermal power station in Kharkiv, and that they caused widespread blackouts.

“No military facilities, the goal is to deprive people of light & heat,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote on Twitter.

Zelenskyy has described Ukraine’s offensive in the northeast as a potential breakthrough in the six-month-old war, and said the winter could see further territorial gains if Kyiv received more powerful weapons.

In the worst defeat for Moscow’s forces since they were repelled from the outskirts of the capital Kyiv in March, thousands of Russian soldiers left behind ammunition and equipment as they fled the city of Izium, which they had used as a logistics hub.

A total blackout in the Kharkiv & Donetsk regions, a partial one in the Zaporizhzhia, Dnipropetrovsk & Sumy regions. RF terrorists remain terrorists & attack critical infrastructure. No military facilities, the goal is to deprive people of light & heat. #RussiaIsATerroristState

— Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) September 11, 2022

Ukraine’s chief commander General Valeriy Zaluzhnyi said the armed forces had regained control of more than 3,000 square kilometers since the start of this month.

Moscow’s almost total silence on the defeat – or any explanation for what had taken place in northeastern Ukraine – provoked significant anger among some pro-war commentators and Russian nationalists on social media.

Zelenskyy said that Russian attacks caused a total blackout in the Kharkiv and Donetsk regions, and partial blackouts in the Zaporizhzhia, Dnipropetrovsk and Sumy regions.

Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukraine’s president, said Kharkiv’s CHPP-5 electricity station – one of the largest in Ukraine – had been hit.

“A coward ‘response’ for the escape of its own army from the battlefield,” he said on Twitter.

Deliberate strikes on critical civilian infrastructure (in particular, on the largest Kharkiv CHPP-5) — a manifestation of RF's terrorism and desire to massively leave civilians without electricity and heat. A coward "response" for the escape of its own army from the battlefield.

— Михайло Подоляк (@Podolyak_M) September 11, 2022

Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov said Ukraine needed to secure retaken territory against a possible Russian counterattack on stretched Ukrainian supply lines. He told the Financial Times that Ukrainian forces could be encircled by fresh Russian troops if they advanced too far.

Kyiv-based military analyst Oleh Zhdanov said the gains could bring a further push into Luhansk region, whose capture Russia claimed at the beginning of July.

Britain’s defence ministry said on Sunday that fighting continued around Izium and the city of Kupiansk, the sole rail hub supplying Russia’s front line across northeastern Ukraine, which has been retaken by Ukraine’s forces.

As the war entered its 200th day, Ukraine on Sunday shut down the last operating reactor at Europe’s biggest nuclear power plant to guard against a catastrophe as fighting rages nearby.

The International Atomic Energy Agency said a backup power line to the plant had been restored, providing the external electricity it needed to carry out the shutdown while defending against the risk of a meltdown. /Euractiv/