Ukraine, Russia target each other’s power grids in fresh escalation

Ukraine launched a series of retaliatory air strikes on Sunday that disrupted power and heating supplies in two Russian cities, in the latest escalation of cross-border attacks targeting critical energy infrastructure ahead of winter.

According to regional officials, Kyiv’s drone and missile strikes cut off power and heating in Belgorod, near the Ukrainian border, and Voronezh, located nearly 300 kilometres away. Belgorod Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said missiles caused “serious damage” to the city’s power and heating systems, affecting around 20,000 households.

In Voronezh, Governor Alexander Gusev reported that several drones were intercepted or electronically jammed, though one strike triggered a brief fire at a local utility facility that was quickly extinguished. The Russian Defence Ministry did not mention either city in its daily briefing but claimed that 44 Ukrainian drones had been destroyed or intercepted overnight.

Local officials in the Rostov region also reported widespread blackouts in the city of Taganrog, home to about 240,000 residents, citing an emergency power line shutdown. Local media outlets said a transformer substation fire may have caused the outage.

The Ukrainian strikes came as Russia carried out one of its largest overnight assaults on Ukraine’s power network this year, targeting substations connected to two nuclear power plants and killing seven people, according to Ukrainian officials quoted by Reuters. Moscow confirmed launching a “massive strike with high-precision long-range weapons” on what it described as weapons production sites and energy infrastructure in response to Kyiv’s earlier attacks.

Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region was still struggling to restore electricity on Sunday, with nearly 100,000 residents without power. State energy company Tsentrenergo said the latest wave of Russian bombardment was the most destructive to its facilities since the invasion began in February 2022, forcing the shutdown of plants in both the Kyiv and Kharkiv regions.

Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched 69 drones overnight, of which 34 were shot down. Both nations have intensified strikes on each other’s energy systems as U.S.-led diplomatic efforts to end the nearly four-year conflict have made little progress.

Kyiv’s long-range drone attacks have frequently targeted Russian oil refineries in an attempt to curb Moscow’s wartime revenue. In contrast, Ukrainian and Western officials accuse Russia of deliberately crippling Ukraine’s power grid to deprive civilians of electricity, heating, and water — a strategy they describe as the weaponisation of winter.

Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said he was prepared to meet U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio to discuss the war and the broader state of bilateral relations. Speaking to state news agency RIA Novosti, Lavrov reiterated that peace would be impossible without addressing Russia’s “security interests,” a phrase widely seen as code for Moscow’s demand that Ukraine concede occupied territories.

President Vladimir Putin continues to insist that Ukraine withdraw troops from all four regions claimed by Russia — Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhia — while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has ruled out recognising any Russian annexations, though he has said some occupied territories could be viewed as “temporarily seized.”

Lavrov’s statement follows the abrupt cancellation of a planned summit between Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump, further underscoring the diplomatic impasse as both sides prepare for another harsh winter of war.

With agency inputs