Several Ukrainian regions suffered power cuts in frigid winter weather on Tuesday after Russia launched its latest deadly large-scale attack with drones and missiles, authorities said.
Neighbouring Poland scrambled jets to protect its airspace during the strikes, the country’s military said in a post on X.
“Russia once again is attacking our energy infrastructure. As a result, emergency power outages have been introduced in a number of Ukrainian regions,” Ukraine’s energy ministry said on Telegram.
Ukraine’s power operator, Ukrenergo, said fires broke out in several regions as a result of the “massive missile and drone attack”, as temperatures dipped towards freezing in most of the country.
One person was killed in the western region of Khmelnytsky and another was killed in Kyiv, local authorities said.
Several people, including children, were wounded in a number of regions, according to local authorities.
Russia has intensified its strikes on the southern Ukrainian port city of Odesa over the past several days in what Ukrainian authorities say is an attempt to completely destroy maritime logistics.
Fresh strikes caused fires but did not result in injuries in the Black Sea city, emergency services said on Tuesday.
Russian strikes on the Black Sea regions have intensified, hitting bridges, ports and cutting electricity and heating to thousands in the middle of winter.
The latest strikes followed weekend negotiations that the US held in Miami with Russian and Ukrainian delegations as part of its effort to end the war that began when Moscow launched a full-scale invasion of its neighbour in February 2022.
“Slow progress is being observed,” the Russian deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, was reported as saying by state media, after Russia and Ukraine sent negotiators to the Florida city for separate talks with the US envoy Steve Witkoff and the US president’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner.
Witkoff had hailed “constructive” discussions with both sides, but there were no signs of a breakthrough.