Russia has bombarded Ukraine’s electrical infrastructure with many of its ballistic missiles, striking from east to west and causing blackouts.
President Volodymr Zelenskyy said Russia had fired 85 missiles on Tuesday, “most of them our electronic weapons,” knocking out power in many cities.
“We are working, we will restore everything. We will survive everything,” said the President.
Its energy minister said it was the “most powerful explosion” in Russia’s nearly nine decades.
The escalation of violence came as leaders of the Group of 20 countries met in Bali for a summit that was dominated by Moscow’s war on Kyiv. They also followed what have been happy days in Ukraine after the country’s biggest military success in the nearly nine-month-old Russian invasion – a repeat of last week’s southern city of Kherson.
As their military damage mounts, Russia has spent the last few months targeting Ukraine’s electricity grid, knocking out power in several locations, apparently using the winter to leave people in the cold and in the dark.
On Tuesday, more than a dozen Ukrainian regions reported violence, which hit other cities including Kyiv, Lviv and Rivne in the west, Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city in the northeast, Kryvyi Rih, the city of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and Poltava in Ukraine. in the middle, Odesa in the south and Zhytomyr in the north.
In Kyiv, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said authorities had found a body in one of three apartment buildings that were hit, and said almost half of the capital was without electricity.
The mayor of Lviv said that power was down in the city and the mayor of Kharkiv, Ihor Terekhov, also said that damaged equipment had been destroyed there.
“There are problems with electricity. Electric trains and metro have been stopped,” Terekhov wrote in the Telegraph.
The governor of Rivne, Vitaliy Koval, said it had been bombed, but said there were no casualties in his city.
Neighboring Moldova was also affected. It also said there would be a major power outage after the militants took out a main power line that supplies the small country, an official said.
Earlier on Tuesday, Zelenskyy told world leaders that there would be no let-up in Ukraine’s efforts to expel Russian troops from its country.
“We will not allow Russia to wait, build up its power, and start new terrorist attacks and global destruction,” he said in a televised address to the G20 summit in Indonesia.
Following the increase in Russian violence, Andriy Yermak, the president’s chief of staff, wrote on Twitter, “Russia is responding to @Zelenskiy’s strong speech at the #G20 with a new missile attack. Does anyone think the Kremlin really wants peace? It wants to listen. But At the end of the day, criminals always lose.
Russia is responding @ZelenskyyUa‘s powerful speech on #G20 and new missile attacks. Does anyone think that the Kremlin really wants peace? It requires obedience. But at the end of the day, criminals always lose.
— Andriy Yermak (@AndriyYermak) November 15, 2022
The attacks on Tuesday came as authorities were already working to get Kherson back and begin investigating alleged Russian persecution there and in its suburbs. The remaining 80,000 people in the city have no heat, water or electricity, and no food or medicine.
The head of the UN human rights office in Ukraine, Matilda Bogner, on Tuesday condemned the “worrying humanitarian situation” there.
Speaking from Kyiv, Mr. Bogner said his teams plan to go to Kherson to try to prove about 80 cases of enforced disappearances and arbitrary detentions.
The head of the National Police of Ukraine, Igor Klymenko, said that authorities have begun to investigate reports from residents of Kherson that Russian soldiers have set up at least three torture centers in the now-liberated Kherson region and that “our people may have been arrested and tortured.” there.”
Zelenskyy compared the restoration of the Allied landings in France on D-Day in the Second World War, saying that these were all watershed events on the way to victory.
But large parts of eastern and southern Ukraine are still under Russian control and Zelenskyy warned of dire news ahead.
“Everywhere, when we liberate our country, we see one thing – Russia leaves many torture chambers and funerals… Zelenskyy asked.
