Over 1.5 million people in the port city of Odesa, Ukraine, were left without electricity on Saturday amid falling temperatures as a result of the attack on the energy infrastructure, according to reports.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the president of Ukraine, noted during his evening speech that the situation in the port city of Odesa is very challenging because it could take months to fix the energy facilities. The ongoing war allegedly resulted in drones made in Iran attacking two nearby energy plants, causing damage to the energy infrastructure, and leaving Odesa without electricity, according to the Ukrainian authorities. Russian strikes reportedly hit significant transmission lines and equipment early on Saturday, according to officials.
According to the authorities, only vital infrastructure, such as hospitals, labour and delivery rooms, had access to electricity.
Kyrylo Tymoshenko, the deputy director of the presidential administration, posted on the messaging app Telegram that “the city is currently without electricity.”
More than a million people lived in Odesa, the largest port city in Ukraine, prior to Russia’s invasion on February 24 of this year.
According to the chief of the Nikopol district military administration, as reported, Russian munitions struck the Nikopol area in southern Ukraine in November.
“About sixty shells and rocket munitions fell on peaceful settlements,” the head of the administration of the Nikopol district, Yevhen Yevtushenko said in a Telegram post.
“Although residential buildings and cars were damaged, no one was reported injured in the shelling,” Yevtushenko added.
Notably, the Nikopol neighbourhood, which is located in the Dnipropetrovsk region, is across the river from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station, which Russia has seized, according to CNN.
On February 24, Russia began a special military operation in Ukraine in response to a request for assistance from the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics (DPR and LPR) to defend themselves against the forces of Kiev. Russia has always asserted that the sole military infrastructure being attacked as part of its special operation is to demilitarise and “denazify” Ukraine.