Russian strikes hit power facilities around Kyiv, damage major bridge

KYIV: Russian forces launched missile and drone attacks on Ukraine’s capital Kyiv and the surrounding region overnight, damaging energy infrastructure and a major bridge across the Dnipro River, officials said on Saturday.

Explosions rocked the city as Russia fired multiple waves of ballistic missiles, several of them hitting the Northern Bridge, according to Mayor Vitali Klitschko.

He described an “extremely difficult” situation for power, heating and water supplies in Kyiv, where temperatures hovered near freezing on Saturday morning. Governor Tymur Tkachenko said energy facilities in at least three districts of the Kyiv region had been hit.

One person was killed and eight people including a child were wounded in the overnight attack, which also damaged homes and non-residential buildings, authorities said.

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Moscow’s defence ministry said it carried out a massive strike on what it described as targets in Ukraine’s military-industrial sector, as well as energy and transport infrastructure in and around Kyiv.

Russia has stepped up air attacks on Ukraine as its ground offensive has largely stalled, pounding energy infrastructure in major cities with difficult-to-intercept missiles and drones more than 4-1/2 years into its full-scale invasion.

It has expanded its campaign in recent weeks to target Kyiv’s bridges, snarling traffic in the city of more than 3 million.

Saturday’s strikes also damaged energy infrastructure in the central Zhytomyr region, the regional governor and Russia’s defence ministry said.

They come days before a new round of three-way talks in Abu Dhabi between Ukrainian and Russian officials, as part of a US-backed peace push that has so far yielded few results.