The New York Times
Russia struck Ukrainian energy infrastructure on Saturday night with hundreds of drones and dozens of missiles, forcing emergency outages across Ukraine just days after peace talks concluded with few signs of progress.
“Every day, Russia could choose real diplomacy, but it chooses new strikes,” President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said on social media. “Moscow must be deprived of the ability to use the cold as leverage against Ukraine,” he added.
The overnight strikes hit high-voltage transmission lines that are used to transmit electricity nationwide and that form the backbone of Ukraine’s power grid, as well as power plants and substations, said Denys Shmyhal, the country’s energy minister.
The damage prompted Kyiv to request emergency electricity assistance from Poland, Mr. Shmyhal said on social media. The strikes were the latest in a series of Russian attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure during a winter freeze.