Hours ahead of a key White House meeting between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and US President Donald Trump, where Zelenskyy is expected to make a strong case for more American-made long-range missiles, Ukrainian authorities said Thursday that Russian attacks on energy facilities caused blackouts across the country.
Some eight Ukrainian regions experienced blackouts after the barrage, Ukraine’s national energy operator, Ukrenergo, said.
And according to Zelenskyy, Russia fired more than 300 drones and 37 missiles at Ukraine overnight. He accused Russia of using cluster munitions and conducting repeated strikes on the same target to hit emergency crews and engineers working to repair the grid.
“This fall, the Russians are using every single day to strike our energy infrastructure,” Zelenskyy said on Telegram.
The Russian attack is the latest heavy bombardment on Ukraine’s power grid and comes just as Zelenskyy pushes for US missiles capable of penetrating deeper into Russia, which he believes will dissuade Moscow from continuing its war on his country.
On Thursday, and ahead of Friday’s meeting with Zelenskyy, Trump spoke with Russian leader Vladimir Putin in a phone call, which, according to the White House, was initiated by the Kremlin and lasted more than two hours.
Trump announced after the call that he would be meeting with Putin in Budapest, Hungary, to try to bring the war to an end. No date for the meeting has been set.
Trump said in a post on Truth Social that he will discuss his call with Putin “and much more” when he meets Zelenskyy on Friday, adding that “I believe great progress was made with today’s telephone conversation.”
Russia fires hundreds of drones and 37 missiles
The Ukrainian power grid has been one of Russia’s main targets since its invasion of its neighbour more than three years ago.
On Thursday, DTEK, the country’s largest private energy company, reported outages in the capital, Kyiv, and said it had to stop its natural gas extraction in the central Poltava region due to the strikes.
Natural gas infrastructure was damaged for the sixth time this month, Naftogaz, Ukraine’s state-owned oil and gas company, said.
In what has now become common, Russian attacks increase as the bitterly cold months approach in a strategy that Ukrainian officials call “weaponising winter.” Russia says it aims only at targets of military value.
Ukraine has hit back by targeting oil refineries and related infrastructure that are crucial for Russia’s economy and war effort. Ukraine’s general staff said Thursday its forces struck the Saratov oil refinery, in the Russian region of the same name, for the second time in two months.
The facility is located some 500 kilometres from the Ukrainian border. Moscow made no immediate comment on the claim.
Ukraine seeks air defences and attack missiles
Ukrainian forces have resisted Russia’s bigger and better-equipped army, limiting it to a grinding war of attrition along the roughly 1,000-kilometre front line snaking through eastern and southern regions.
But Ukraine, almost the size of the US state of Texas, is hard to defend from the air in its entirety, and Kyiv officials are seeking more Western help to fend against aerial attacks and strike back at Russia.
Zelenskyy was expected to arrive in the United States on Thursday, ahead of his Oval Office meeting with Trump on Friday.
Ukraine is seeking cruise missiles, air defence systems, and joint drone production agreements from the United States, Kyiv officials say. Zelenskyy also wants tougher international economic sanctions on Moscow.