A Ukrainian drone strike late Tuesday plunged Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine's southeastern Zaporizhzhia region into mass power outages, the Moscow-installed governor said.
The governor, Yevgeny Balitsky, posted on Telegram that the power outage hit several Russian-occupied towns. "The cause of the power outages in Zaporizhzhia region is another enemy terrorist drone strike on high-voltage facilities," he stated.
Repair teams were trying to bring power back by rerouting impacted areas onto reserve lines. Balitsky explained that the process was made difficult by threats of further attacks and nightfall.
Zaporizhzhia, which is under partial Russian control, is still a hot spot in the conflict. Although Russian troops control over half of the territory, the central administrative center is still controlled by Kyiv and has carried out frequent attacks that periodically cut off electricity to occupied territories.
Europe's biggest nuclear plant, the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, remained open as usual after the drone attacks. The Russian-held plant needs electricity to power cooling and surveillance systems to maintain security. The plant's communications director Yevgenia Yashina assured Russia's RIA news agency that the plant was not affected.
Both Moscow and Kyiv have blamed each other for shelling the plant since February 2022, when the war began, after Russia captured the facility early on in its invasion.
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Russian shelling also inflicted casualties in neighboring Ukrainian-held areas. In Kherson province, Governor Vyacheslav Prokudin said a resident was killed to the north of the regional capital. In Dnipropetrovsk province, Governor Serhiy Lysak reported that Russian shelling killed a resident in Nikopol, a city regularly targeted on the north bank of the Dnipro River.
Power outages and civilian fatalities highlight the continuing instability on Ukraine's battle lines, with infrastructure and populations perpetually under attack from drones and artillery. Previous attacks have resulted in even more significant outages; in June, Ukrainian shelling and drone attacks left more than 700,000 residents in the dark for over 24 hours.
As Kyiv's drone attacks intensify on occupied territories, instability hits Russian-controlled areas more, with fears over civilian security and the safety of vital infrastructure, such as the nuclear power plant.
