Russia strikes leave thousands in Ukraine without power

Russian strikes have left over 100,000 households without power in northern Ukraine and cut off the water supply to a regional capital, Ukrainian authorities say.

The northern Sumy region, which borders Russia, was plunged into darkness after Russian strikes damaged energy infrastructure, the Ukrainian Energy Ministry said.

Hours later, the Ukrainian public broadcaster reported that Russian drones hit the provincial capital, also called Sumy, cutting off water by hitting power lines that feed its system of pumps.

Russian state agency RIA cited a local pro-Kremlin "underground" leader as saying that Moscow's forces overnight hit a plant producing rocket ammunition in the city, which had a pre-war population of over 256,000.

The report didn't specify what weapon was used, and the claim could not be independently verified. Explosions rocked the city during an air raid warning on Saturday, according to Ukrainian media reports.

Russia is continually targeting Ukraine's badly damaged energy infrastructure, resulting in hours of rolling blackouts across the country. Ukrainian officials have warned that the situation may worsen as winter approaches.

In the Donetsk region in the east, Russian shelling on Friday and overnight killed 11 civilians and wounded 43, local governor Vadym Filashkin reported.

Five people died in the town of Selydove southeast of Pokrovsk, the eastern city that has emerged as a frontline hot spot.

The Ukrainian General Staff said Ukrainian and Russian forces clashed 45 times near Pokrovsk over the past 24 hours. Hours later, the Russian Ministry of Defence announced its troops had captured a village some 30km east of the city.

According to Filashkin, three more civilians died in Chasiv Yar, the strategically located town in Donetsk that has been reduced to rubble under a month-long Russian assault.

Russian forces have for months tried to grind out gains in Ukraine's industrial east, in an apparent attempt to lock its defenders into a war of attrition, after Kyiv's forces thwarted a cross-border push further north that briefly threatened Ukraine's second-largest city of Kharkiv.

"The situation was hottest today in the Pokrovsk area, but the enemy was also active in the direction of Lyman and Kurakhove," the Ukrainian General Staff said in a report on Saturday night.

Over the course of the day, there were 123 battles, the report said.

Of those, 41 were in the Pokrovsk region alone, and there were 19 and 17 attacks near Lyman and Kurakhove respectively, it said.

Ukraine has been defending itself against a full-scale Russian invasion since it was ordered by President Vladimir Putin in February 2022.

There is currently no end to the war in sight. Among other things, Putin wants Ukraine to completely relinquish the territories of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, Zaporizhzhya and Crimea as a condition for an end to the fighting.

Kiev, meanwhile, insists on Russia's complete withdrawal from all occupied territories, including the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, illegally annexed by Moscow in 2014.

Putin reiterated again this week that he would never declare a ceasefire in Ukraine without Kiev meeting his preconditions.

with DPA