Russian attacks leave thousands of people in northern Ukraine without electricity and water

KIEV, Ukraine – On Sunday night, more than 100,000 households in northern Ukraine were left without electricity and the water supply to a regional capital was disrupted by Russian attacks, Ukrainian authorities said on Saturday. In the embattled east of the country, the number of civilian casualties has risen sharply.

The northern region of Sumy, bordering Russia, is shrouded in darkness after Russian attacks damaged energy infrastructure late Friday, Ukraine’s Energy Ministry said. Hours later, Ukrainian public broadcaster reported that Russian drones had attacked the provincial capital of Sumy, cutting off water supplies by hitting power lines that feed the pumping system.

Russian state agency RIA quoted a local pro-Kremlin “underground” leader as saying Moscow’s forces overnight attacked a factory producing rocket ammunition in the city, which had a population of over 256,000 before the war. The report did not specify which weapon was used and the claim could not be independently verified. Explosions in the city occurred during an air raid alert early Saturday morning, according to Ukrainian media reports.

Russia is continuously attacking Ukraine’s badly damaged energy infrastructure, causing hours-long power outages across the country. Ukrainian officials warn that the situation could worsen as winter approaches.

In the eastern Donetsk region, Russian artillery shelling killed 11 civilians and wounded 43 on Friday and overnight, the region’s governor, Vadym Filashkin, reported on Saturday. Five people died in the town of Selydove, southeast of Pokrovsk, the eastern city that has become a flashpoint on the front lines.

The Ukrainian General Staff said on Saturday morning that Ukrainian and Russian forces had clashed 45 times near Pokrovsk the previous day. Hours later, the Russian Defense Ministry announced that its troops had captured a village about 30 kilometers east of the city.

According to Filashkin, three other civilians died in Chasiv Yar, the strategically located town in Donetsk that was reduced to rubble by a months-long Russian attack.

For months, Russian forces have been trying to gain a foothold in Ukraine’s industrial east in what appears to be an attempt to draw the country’s defenders into a war of attrition after Kyiv’s forces thwarted a cross-border advance further north that briefly threatened Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city.

A Ukrainian military spokesman told AP on Thursday that Ukrainian forces had withdrawn from a neighborhood on the outskirts of Khasiv Yar. The town’s elevated position gives it strategic importance, and military analysts say its fall would endanger nearby cities. It could also threaten key Ukrainian supply routes and bring Russia closer to its stated goal of taking the entire Donetsk region.

According to the Ukrainian General Staff, Russian forces launched six missile strikes and 55 airstrikes on Ukraine on Friday and overnight, and used more than 70 glide bombs – converted Soviet-era weapons that have wreaked havoc in the country in recent weeks.

Ukrainian soldiers gathered in Kyiv on Saturday to pay their last respects to a British medic who founded a charity that supplies frontline fighters with vital supplies.

Peter Fouché died on the front lines last Thursday when his unit clashed with Russian troops, according to a statement from Project Konstantin, a volunteer group that has been transporting drones, vehicles, uniforms and food to Ukrainian soldiers in the east since 2022. It has also helped evacuate 219 Ukrainian soldiers from combat zones, according to its website.

At the farewell ceremony, Ukrainian soldiers carried Fouché’s coffin across Kyiv’s famous Independence Square, the scene of the 2014 mass protests that ousted the pro-Russian president, to a memorial to the country’s fallen defenders. Fouché’s comrades held back tears as they lined up to say goodbye. Mourners read prayers while holding Ukrainian flags and military banners.

Fouché’s partner, wearing a traditional Ukrainian embroidered shirt, knelt and hugged the coffin. Halyna Zhuk, who co-founded the Konstantin project and has a daughter with the medic, called him a “true hero.”

“Every time he went into battle, I would say goodbye to him, ‘Thank you, my protector.’ And today I can only say it again: Thank you, my protector,” she said.

Fouché, a West London native who turned 49 this year, helped build a field hospital in Kyiv before launching Project Konstantin, according to the group’s website, and later joined the Ukrainian army. Since the full-scale Russian invasion in February 2022, at least five other Britons have been killed while volunteering in Ukraine.

In Russia, two civilians were injured when Ukrainian forces shelled a border town in the southern Belgorod region overnight, governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said.

The Russian Defense Ministry said its troops shot down a total of eight drones over the Kursk and Belgorod regions in the south during the night.

In Krasnodar province in Russian-annexed Crimea, local authorities reported damage caused by falling drone debris overnight. Debris sparked a fire at an oil depot, set fuel tanks ablaze elsewhere and damaged a cell phone tower, the reports said. There were no immediate reports of casualties.

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