Ukraine-Russia warfare newest: Putin launches ‘massive’ cruise missile assault on Ukraine vitality grid

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Russia used cruise missiles with cluster munitions to attack Ukrainian energy infrastructure on Thursday, calling it a “despicable escalation.”

Zelenskiy reiterated his call to Kyiv’s Western allies to provide more air defence and ensure timely deliveries, especially during critical winter months as Ukraine struggles to protect its energy infrastructure from the strikes.

Ukraine’s air force has said it shot down 79 out of 91 missiles launched by Russia during its attack targeting the country’s energy infrastructure.

The Ukrainian military shot down 35 drones and lost track of 62 out of 97 drones launched by Russia in the attack, it said on Thursday.

Ukraine disconnected several nuclear power units from the network amid Russian attacks on energy infrastructure on Thursday, a Ukrainian energy industry source told Reuters.

At least one million people are without any power after Russian attacked Ukraine’s energy infrastructure overnight across three western region, officials said.

The attacks cut power to 523,000 consumers in Lviv region, about 215,000 in Volyn region and over 280,000 in Rivne region, their governors reported on the Telegram channels.

Russia hit Ukraine with a “massive” missile attack on energy infrastructure across several cities overnight, officials said. It represents Russia’s second big attack on the besieged country’s energy grid this month.

Officials confirmed massive blasts and power cuts across the country, affecting hundreds of thousands of people.

“Energy infrastructure is once again targeted by the enemy’s massive strike,” Ukrainian energy minister German Galushchenko wrote on Facebook. Ukraine’s national grid operator Ukrenergo introduced emergency power cuts amid the attack, Mr Galushchenko said.

Ukraine’s top private power company DTEK said the power cuts impacted the capital as well as the Kyiv, Odesa, Dnipropetrovsk and Donetsk regions.

During the overnight missile attack on the western Rivne region, governor Oleksandr Koval said 280,000 consumers experienced power cuts. He also reported interruptions in water supply without elaborating on damage.

The mayor of the western town of Lutsk reported power cuts after several strikes, adding that the services were working to connect water and heating infrastructure to alternative power sources.

Kharkiv regional governor Oleh Syniehubov said a missile strike on the city damaged a business facility and windows in an apartment building.

The missile attack on the northeastern Sumy region targeted infrastructure, regional authorities said. Debris in Kyiv fell on the grounds of a business and dealt minor damage to several buildings and a truck, the Kyiv city military administration said.

Russia has repeatedly targeted Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, particularly during the winter months of the almost three-year-long war, which have triggered long power cuts for ordinary civilians.

Russia has issued a warning to the United States to halt what it called a “spiral of escalation” over Ukraine – but said it would keep informing Washington about test missile launches in order to avoid “dangerous mistakes”.

Speaking just days after Russia lowered its doctrinal threshold for the use of nuclear weapons and launched what it described as a new intermediate-range hypersonic ballistic missile against Ukraine, deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov said: “The signal is very clear and obvious – stop.

“You should not do this any more, you mustn’t supply Kyiv with everything they want, don’t encourage them towards new military adventures, they are too dangerous,” Russian state media quoted Mr Ryabkov as saying.

“The current [US] administration must stop this spiral of escalation,” Mr Ryabkov added. “They simply must, otherwise the situation will become too dangerous for everyone, including the United States itself.”

Russia’s air defence systems destroyed 25 Ukrainian drones overnight over four regions, its defence ministry said this morning.

Of these, 14 drones were destroyed over the Krasnodar region, six over the Bryansk region, three over Moscow-annexed Crimea and two over the Rostov region, it said.

Krasnodar’s regional governor, Veniamin Kondratyev, wrote on Telegram that two districts in the southern Russian region were subjected to a “massive drone attack” overnight. One civilian was injured, he said.

A local Telegram channel published footage showing an object crashing into a building in the town of Slavyansk-na-Kubani, followed by a loud boom and fireball.

In the summer of 2015, three Syrian girls who had narrowly survived an airstrike some weeks earlier stood before Tulsi Gabbard with horrific burns all over their bodies.

Gabbard, then a US congresswoman on a visit to the Syria-Turkey border as part of her duties for the foreign affairs committee, had a question for them.

“How do you know it was Bashar al-Assad or Russia that bombed you, and not Isis?’” she asked, according to Mouaz Moustafa, a Syrian activist who was translating her conversation with the girls.

Richard Hall and Andrew Feinberg write:

A senior Russian official has said any peace deal on the war in Ukraine will have to be made on Vladimir Putin’s terms, the latest display of bravado from the Kremlin amid strong Russian territorial gains in the Donbas.

Peace in Ukraine can be negotiated if the United States and the West recognise that there are no alternatives to Russian president Vladimir Putin’s offer, Russian deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov said today, according to the state-run RIA news agency.

Mr Putin’s offer is the only option to end the war, he said.

His remarks comes a day after Ukraine’s former foreign minister said Vladimir Putin will not accept a peace deal pushed by US president-elect Donald Trump, because the Russian president is “obsessed” with “crushing” Ukraine and exposing the weakness of the West.

Russian authorities on Tuesday ordered a British diplomat to leave the country on allegations of spying as tensions soar over the conflict in Ukraine.

Russia’s Federal Security Service, the top domestic security and counterintelligence agency, said in a statement carried by Russian news agencies that the diplomat, identified as Edward Pryor Wilkes, had provided false personal data while seeking permission to enter the country.

The agency, known under its Russian acronym FSB, alleged that he has worked for British intelligence under diplomatic cover, replacing one of the six British diplomats who were expelled from Russia in August. The FSB alleged that Wilkes was involved in “intelligence and subversive activities that threatened the security of the Russian Federation.”

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