Russian missile attacks on Ukrainian energy facilities kill at least four

Russia launched a barrage of drones and missiles at Ukraine overnight, killing at least four people and damaging energy infrastructure in three separate regions, according to Ukrainian officials.

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said Russia had launched more than 450 drones and 45 missiles, most of which were shot down.

Three people were killed and 12 wounded when a drone hit an apartment building in Dnipro, and another person was killed in the Kharkiv region. Energy infrastructure in Kyiv, Poltava and Kharkiv regions was damaged by the strikes, according to the Ukrainian prime minister, Yulia Svyrydenko.

Energy companies were working to restore electricity, water and heating provision, while several cities resorted to generators to keep the power on. Kremenchuk and Horishni Plavni in the central Poltava region, were using generators to maintain water supplies, municipal officials said.

Zelenskyy called for more sanctions after the strikes. “For every Moscow strike on energy infrastructure – aimed at harming ordinary people before winter – there must be a sanctions response targeting all Russian energy, with no exceptions,” he said.

Russian attacks on Ukraine’s energy sector have increased in recent months, with the military attacking gas facilities nine times in the past two months, according to the state energy firm Naftogaz.

On Saturday, Ukrainian drones hit an electricity substation in northern Russia and separately wounded two other people in a strike on a residential building in the city of Saratov.

Russia claimed its “massive strike” was on Ukrainian weapons production and energy facilities. It also said it had captured a village in eastern Ukraine as its forces there continued to gradually push on the frontline.

Despite US pressure for a ceasefire, negotiations for a permanent truce in Ukraine have faltered. In October, Donald Trump called on Russia and Ukraine to freeze the existing frontlines and end the war.

Starting talks by freezing the frontlines was endorsed by Zelenskyy but rejected by the Russian foreign ministerm Sergei Lavrov, who said Moscow was only interested in “long-term, sustainable peace”.

The former Nato secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen warned on Thursday that Ukraine was facing a “forever war” and a slow erosion of territory unless Europe increased its pressure on Russia.

The conflict began in February 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine, the start of the largest and deadliest war in Europe since the second world war.