Power cuts of up to 16 hours a day are expected across most of Ukraine on Sunday as repairs continue following Russian attacks that have reduced generating capacity to zero, according to the national grid operator Ukrenergo.
The strikes, launched from Friday into Saturday, involved hundreds of drones and killed at least seven people, disrupting electricity, heat and water supplies in several cities. State power firm Centerenergo warned that generating capacity "is down to zero".
While the situation has partially stabilised, Energy Minister Svitlana Grynchuk said regions including Kyiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Kharkiv, Poltava, Chernihiv and Sumy could continue to experience regular outages. She described the attack as a massive ballistic missile strike, with an unprecedented number of direct hits on energy facilities.
Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said Russian drones had targeted substations serving the Khmelnytskyi and Rivne nuclear plants, endangering nuclear safety in Europe, and called for an urgent meeting of the IAEA Board of Governors. He also urged China and India to press Moscow to halt the attacks.
Experts have warned of potential heating outages before winter, with Naftogaz reporting the ninth massive attack on gas infrastructure since early October. The Kyiv School of Economics estimates that half of Ukraine's natural gas production has been shut down, and energy expert Oleksandr Kharchenko cautioned that if Kyiv's two power and heating plants fail for over three days at sub-zero temperatures, the capital could face a technological disaster.
In response, Ukraine has intensified its own strikes on Russian oil depots and refineries, while Russia claimed its air defence units destroyed 44 Ukrainian drones early on Sunday.
