Russia attacked targets in Ukraine with three missiles and 164 drones overnight into Sunday, killing one person each in Dnipro and Odesa. As the news outlet Hromadske reports, citing the authorities, hits were recorded at 23 locations; Ukrainian air defence managed to shoot down 137 of the drones. According to the report, 112 of the 164 combat drones were jet-powered, and the three missiles were Kh-59/69 guided aerial bombs.
The governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region, Oleksandr Hanzha, said that the attack on the private district of Dnipro killed one person and injured another. In Odesa, according to the authorities, an administrative building was damaged and one person died. Because of the attacks on energy facilities, according to Hanzha, more than 600,000 people in the Dnipro, Kamianske, Samarivka, Pavlohrad and Synelnykove districts are without power. The energy company DTEK confirmed the figure of 600,000 affected, as tagesschau.de reports; repairs are under way, but “repeated attacks” are making the task harder.
Emergency power at the occupied nuclear power plant
The attacks also affect the nuclear regulator: as the International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed, the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant has lost its external power supply and is again being cooled with emergency generators. The Russian plant management described the radiation levels on the site as normal. Europe’s largest nuclear power plant is currently not producing electricity but needs energy to cool the fuel rods.
The Kharkiv region was also affected. According to the governor of the Kharkiv region, Oleh Syniehubov, Kharkiv and ten other locations came under Russian attacks last night, including with FPV drones. Five people were harmed, including a 59-year-old woman and a 34-year-old man in Kharkiv who suffered injuries, as well as an 80-year-old woman with an acute stress reaction. Residential buildings, cars and trolleybuses were damaged. The prosecutor’s office of the Kharkiv region later said that Russian troops had attacked the Kyivskyi district of Kharkiv several times with FPV drones, including in the morning on the roof of an apartment building, at around 10.15 on a garage area and at around 10.35 on the roadway. A 73-year-old woman was injured on the street; investigations are ongoing.
Another attack on rescue workers in Komyshuvakha
In the Zaporizhzhia region, the town of Komyshuvakha was hit again, where rescue work has been under way since 2 November after aerial bombs struck a school. According to President Volodymyr Zelensky, an FPV drone attacked the site of the rescue work on Sunday morning. The acting head of the regional military administration, Mykhailo Semikin, said that personnel of the State Emergency Service (DSNS) were not injured, but special rescue equipment was damaged. Zelensky called the renewed attack an expression of “absolute cynicism and cruelty”.
According to the latest figures, the death toll from the 2 November attack on the school is at least 55; people may still be lying under the rubble. According to the Zaporizhzhia regional military administration, 29 of the dead have been identified and 45 people are considered missing. The news agency AP reports that many of the recovered bodies have not yet been identified and that DNA analyses are under way. On Saturday, police officers and relatives of the victims, among others, were farewelled in Zaporizhzhia.
In the Zaporizhzhia region there was also a Russian drone attack on a civilian car: according to the acting head of the regional military administration, Mykhailo Semikin, a 54-year-old man was injured and taken to hospital. In the city of Khmelnytskyi, according to the authorities, private homes were damaged and windows were destroyed in apartment buildings; one person was injured.
Zelensky summed up the past week on Sunday: Russia had fired 115 missiles of various types and almost 1,900 guided aerial bombs at Ukraine. Many of the weapons used were ballistic, some of them produced this year. The president linked the attacks to diplomatic efforts to end the war: Moscow wanted to increase the pressure with the attacks a few days before the planned talks in Abu Dhabi, according to Zelensky, as reported by tagesschau.de.
For the people in Ukraine, this again means a winter with power cuts and heating problems. According to the city, hundreds of buildings in Kyiv are still without heating; the city administration announced that it would help without bureaucracy. Ukraine fears another difficult winter of war.
