\n<\/p>\n
A large-scale Russian missile and drone attack damaged power plants and caused blackouts for more than a million Ukrainians on Friday morning, in what Ukrainian officials said was one of the war\u2019s largest assaults on energy infrastructure.<\/p>\n
At least three people were killed in the assault, and 15 others were injured, according to the office of Ukraine\u2019s general prosecutor<\/a>.<\/p>\n The strikes came as \u200bthe Kremlin escalated its rhetoric over the conflict, saying that Russia was \u201cin a state of war\u201d in Ukraine \u2014 and moving beyond the euphemism \u201cspecial military operation\u201d \u2014 because of the West\u2019s heavy involvement on the Ukrainian side.<\/p>\n In Kharkiv, Ukraine\u2019s second-largest city, traffic lights were not working and the water supply was disrupted. A fire raged at the country\u2019s largest hydroelectric dam, in the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia. A few dozen miles to the southwest, a power line supplying a Russian-occupied nuclear power plant was temporarily knocked out.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThe enemy is now launching the largest attack on the Ukrainian energy sector in recent times,\u201d Herman Halushchenko, Ukraine\u2019s energy minister, said on Facebook<\/a>. \u201cThe goal is not just to damage, but to try again, like last year, to cause a large-scale failure of the country\u2019s energy system.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The Ukrainian Air Force<\/a> said that Russia had launched 63 Iranian-made \u201cShahed\u201d attack drones and 88 missiles in the assault, including hypersonic weapons that fly at several times the speed of sound. The air force said it had shot down most of the drones but fewer than half of the missiles, a low interception rate compared with previous assaults that may reflect Ukraine\u2019s dwindling air-defense stocks.<\/p>\n \u201cRussian missiles have no delays, unlike aid packages for Ukraine,\u201d President Volodymyr Zelensky said on social media<\/a>, an apparent reference to the $60 billion in military assistance for Ukraine that Republicans in the United States Congress have held up for months<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201c\u2018Shahed\u2019 drones have no indecision, unlike some politicians,\u201d Mr. Zelensky added.<\/p>\n Russia nonetheless complained on Friday about the United States\u2019 assistance to Ukraine in the two years of war.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Since Moscow\u2019s full-scale invasion began in 2022, the Kremlin has insisted that it was conducting a \u201cspecial military operation.\u201d The country\u2019s communications watchdog ordered Russian news media outlets not to describe the hostilities as an \u201cinvasion\u201d or a \u201cdeclaration of war.\u201d<\/p>\n But Russian officials including President Vladimir V. Putin have occasionally used the word war in reference to the conflict, mostly to insist that Russia has been fighting a Western coalition. And in an interview published on Friday in a hawkish pro-Kremlin tabloid, the Kremlin\u2019s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, attempted to explain the change.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cYes, it started as a special military operation, but as soon as this grouping was formed, when the collective West became a participant in this one the side of Ukraine, it became a war for us,\u201d he said. \u201cI am convinced of that,\u201d he added. \u201cAnd everyone should understand that for their internal mobilization.\u201d<\/p>\n The assault on Friday was reminiscent of Russia\u2019s air campaign against the Ukrainian energy grid<\/a> during the first winter of the war, which plunged Kyiv into cold and darkness. The Ukrainian authorities had warned that Russia was likely to repeat that campaign this winter, but instead Moscow\u2019s air attacks had so far mostly targeted industrial and military facilities.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Friday\u2019s attack was Russia\u2019s second large-scale air assault in two days. A missile attack on Kyiv on Thursday<\/a> injured at least 13 people and damaged several buildings.<\/p>\n The latest assault began shortly after midnight, when Russian forces launched dozens of attack drones against several Ukrainian regions, according to Ukraine\u2019s air force. Then, around 3 a.m., Russian fighter jets fired cruise missiles, followed by ballistic missiles and then hypersonic Kinzhal missiles, one of the most sophisticated weapons in Russia\u2019s arsenal.<\/p>\n The complex barrage appeared designed to overwhelm Ukrainian air defenses, following a strategy used in previous Russian air assaults<\/a>. Ukraine\u2019s air force said it had not managed to shoot down any of the Kinzhal missiles.<\/p>\n Missile strikes on power facilities caused outages in seven Ukrainian regions, according to Ukrenergo<\/a>, the national electricity company, prompting the country to receive urgent energy assistance from Poland, Romania and Slovakia.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Volodymyr Kudrytskyi, the head of Ukrenergo, said that the attack<\/a> was bigger than those targeting energy infrastructure during the first winter of the war. Oleksiy Kuleba<\/a>, the deputy head of Ukraine\u2019s presidential office, said that hundreds of thousands of homes had temporarily lost power, affecting some 1.2 million residents.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Mr. Kuleba said that \u201cblackout schedules\u201d had been introduced in several regions to \u201cpreserve the power system\u201d during repairs.<\/p>\n Particularly affected was the eastern city of Kharkiv, where about 15 explosions were heard, according to Mayor Ihor Terekhov. A pumping station was hit, hampering the city\u2019s water supply, and electric trams and buses were not functioning.<\/p>\n \u201cThe city is almost completely without electricity,\u201d Oleh Syniehubov<\/a>, the head of the regional military administration, said in the early morning. He said that 700,000 of the region\u2019s residents had no electricity as of 9 a.m.<\/p>\n In the southern city of Zaporizhia, the Dnipro hydroelectric power plant suffered damage to its structure, including a large dam. Photos and videos<\/a> posted online showed fire and smoke billowing from the plant, and the local authorities said that the road across the dam had been closed. Ihor Syrota<\/a>, the head of Ukrhydronenergo, the state company that owns Ukraine\u2019s hydroelectric plants, said that there was no risk of a breach, but that an electricity-generating unit was in critical condition.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Attacks on power installations were also reported in the western regions of Vinnytsia, Lviv and Ivano-Frankivsk. Airstrikes on these areas have been rare during the war.<\/p>\n Ukraine invested in protecting its energy infrastructure after the first winter of the war, building multilayered fortifications that included sandbags, concrete walls and cages filled with rocks. But the country\u2019s energy system remains hobbled<\/a>.<\/p>\n Oleksandra Mykolyshyn contributed reporting from Kyiv.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n