Ukrainian power grid was hit by 'massive' Russian attack

 Ukraine's already vulnerable power grid was hit by a "massive" Russian attack on Sunday, national authorities said, killing at least eight people and wounding around 20 across the country.

President Volodymyr Zelensky said a "massive attack targeted all regions of Ukraine" and "our energy infrastructure".

He said 120 missiles and 90 drones had been fired, and that air defences had destroyed 140 of them.

Foreign Minister Andriy Sypiga said on Sunday that his country was subjected to "one of the largest air attacks" by Russia, referring to the launch of "drones and missiles against peaceful cities, sleeping civilians and vital facilities".

For its part, the Russian Defense Ministry announced that it had hit "all" of its targets in a large-scale attack on "the essential energy infrastructure that supports the Ukrainian military-industrial complex".

Russia is intensifying its attacks with drones and missiles, and according to Kiev, it has destroyed half of Ukraine's energy capacity.

The Ukrainian energy operator Detek said some of its thermal power plants had suffered "serious damage", but no casualties among its employees.

The strikes come as Ukraine, which is struggling on the battlefront, fears losing US support with the re-election of Donald Trump as US president.

Ukraine is suffering from major power outages, raising fears of a harsh winter.

Detek announced on Sunday an "emergency power outage" in the Kiev, Donetsk and Dnipropetrovsk regions before later announcing the restoration of power. Energy.

Power was also cut off in parts of Odessa (south), according to the city's mayor.

Various local authorities reported that "essential infrastructure" and "energy production" were attacked in the Vinnitsa region (central-west), Rivne and Volhynia (west) and Zaporizhia (south).

Kiev is urging its Western partners to help it rebuild its electricity grid, a project that requires significant investment, and to provide it with air defenses to counter Russian bombing.

In total, the Russian attacks on Ukraine on Saturday night and Sunday morning left eight dead and about twenty wounded, according to local authorities.

Among them were two employees of the state railway company Ukrzaliznytsia, who were killed in the bombing of a warehouse in Nikopol (south), while three others were wounded, the company announced.

A woman was killed and two people were wounded in a missile attack on the Lviv region (west), which is rarely targeted, according to the head of the military administration, Maxim Kozytsky.

Two people were killed and a 17-year-old boy was wounded in Odessa, according to Governor Oleg Kiper.

A drone strike killed two people and wounded six others, including two children, in the southern city of Mykolaiv, according to emergency services.

Two more people were wounded in Kyiv in an attack on a residential building, according to the interior ministry.

People were wounded in separate attacks in Dnipro (east) as well as in the Poltava (central) and Zaporizhia and Kherson (south).

Russian missiles and drones have even reached Transcarpathia, a rarely targeted region in the far west of the country, far from the front and on the borders with Poland and Hungary in particular.

As a result, the Polish army announced on Sunday that it had ordered fighter jets to take off and mobilized "all available forces and capabilities" to protect the country during a "large-scale attack" by Russia on Ukraine.

Warsaw puts its military on alert as soon as it considers that an attack on Ukraine could pose a threat to its territory.

Sibiga considered that these attacks constitute the "real response" of Russian President Vladimir Putin to the leaders who "called him or visited him" recently.

On Friday, Kiev expressed its dissatisfaction with a phone call made by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to Putin, the first since December 2022.

Before this call, the Russian president gathered leaders from around the world in Russia, including UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, to attend the BRICS summit.

The victory of Donald Trump in the US presidential election has also revived talk of possible negotiations between Moscow and Kiev.

On Saturday, Zelensky, who has long ruled out any negotiations with Moscow, said he wants to end the war in his country in 2025 "by diplomatic means".

But the positions between Russia and Ukraine remain opposing: while Kiev refuses to give up the territories occupied by the Russian army, Moscow stipulates this as a condition for ending the war.