Ukrainian attacks trigger power outages in Russia – officials

Kiev has targeted energy infrastructure in several Russian regions just hours after the talks in Istanbul.

The Ukrainian military launched drone strikes on multiple Russian regions late Monday evening, causing a complete blackout in Zaporozhye Region and leaving parts of Kherson without electricity, according to local governors.

The attack damaged high-voltage equipment in the northwestern part of Zaporozhye, resulting in a region-wide outage, Governor Evgeny Balitsky wrote on Telegram shortly before midnight.

“Healthcare facilities have been switched to backup power sources,” Balitsky noted. Some 600,000 households across 457 settlements in the Zaporozhye Region were still without electricity as of 7 am Tuesday, regional authorities said, emphasizing that efforts are underway to restore power via alternative routes as quickly as possible.

At 12:18am, Kherson Region Governor Vladimir Saldo reported that a similar Ukrainian drone strike had targeted a new substation in the Genichesky District, cutting power to a large portion of the region.

“More than 104,000 people and 44 socially significant facilities” across roughly 150 settlements were affected, Saldo said. “All critical facilities were connected to backup power supplies,” he added.

The strikes came just hours after Moscow and Kiev concluded the second round of direct peace talks in Istanbul, during which the sides exchanged memorandums outlining their respective proposals for resolving the conflict.

According to the Russian memorandum, a “final settlement” would require international recognition of the former Ukrainian territories as parts of Russia and a full withdrawal of Ukrainian forces from those areas.

The Ukrainian memorandum, as reported by Reuters, rejects Moscow’s key demands, including recognition of the newly incorporated Russian regions, a commitment to neutrality, and limitations on the size of Ukraine’s armed forces.

Kherson and Zaporozhye Regions, along with the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, formally joined Russia following referendums held in the fall of 2022. Crimea voted to rejoin Russia in 2014 after the Western-backed Maidan coup in Kiev.