US warns of sanctions over Iran drone ties after Kyiv strikes
President Volodymyr Zelensky said Tuesday that Russian strikes had destroyed about 30 percent of his country’s power stations in one week, speaking hours after a fresh barrage cut electricity to cities across Ukraine.
Russian attacks rocked energy facilities in Kyiv and urban centres across the country, causing blackouts and disrupting water supplies, just one day after the capital was bombarded with a swarm of suicide drones.
Drones bombarded Kyiv on Monday, destroying a residential building in the centre and killing five people in what the presidency described as an attack of desperation.
Zelensky described the repeated targeted of energy infrastructure as “another kind of Russian terrorist attacks”.
– Hospitals on back-up power –
Many settlements in the Zhytomyr region west of Kyiv and parts of the city of Dnipro in central Ukraine were without electricity, while power was restored to the southern city of Mykolaiv after strikes overnight.
In the northeast meanwhile, Ukraine’s second-largest city of Kharkiv some 40 kilometres (25 miles) from the border with Russia was hit with eight missiles, the regional governor said.
In Kyiv, meanwhile, the DETK energy provider said its staff were “doing their best to restore electricity supply after the destruction of a critical infrastructure facility in Kyiv city.”
“The terrorist state will not change anything for itself with these kind of actions. It will only confirm its destructive and murderous essence, for which it will certainly be held to account,” Zelensky said on social media.
– Kremlin denies Iran drone use –
The Kremlin said Tuesday it has no knowledge of its army using Iranian drones in Ukraine.
Iran has denied exporting any weapons to either side, but the United States warned it would take action against companies and nations working with Tehran’s drone programme following the strikes in Kyiv.
With fighting ongoing across a sprawling frontline in east and southern Ukraine, its military said that over the past 24 hours it had shot down 38 Iranian-made Shahed-136 unmanned aerial.
Investigators said they were questioning the pilots of the Sukhoi Su-34, who managed to parachute out of the plane before it crashed on Monday evening into the nine-storey building, engulfing it in flames.
