Europe 1 with AFP 06:42, December 30, 2022

On the 310th day of the Russian invasion, Ukraine has denounced “massive” Russian missile strikes against its energy infrastructure which it says killed three people and caused power cuts in most of its regions on the eve of the holidays. of New Year.

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Ukraine has denounced "massive" Russian missile strikes against its energy infrastructure which it said killed three people and caused power cuts in most of its regions on the eve of the New Year holidays. there are power cuts in most regions of Ukraine," Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky said Thursday evening in his daily address on the internet.

The main information:

  • Ukraine denounces "massive" strikes by Russia against its energy infrastructure

  • These strikes would have caused 3 deaths and power cuts throughout the country

  • Belarus claims to have shot down a Ukrainian missile over its territory

The situation is "particularly difficult" in the kyiv region and in the capital itself, in that of Lviv, in Transcarpathia and in Vinnytsia (west) as well as in Odessa, Kherson and its surroundings (south), he said. precise.

"With each of these missile attacks, Russia is only sinking deeper into a stalemate," he said.

"They have fewer and fewer missiles."

These strikes left "three dead and six injured, including a child", Ukrainian Interior Minister Denys Monastyrskyi said earlier.

In this context of bombardments, and the activation of Ukrainian anti-aircraft defense, Belarus, Moscow's closest ally, claimed to have shot down an S300 anti-aircraft defense missile from "Ukrainian territory" over its territory.

And summoned the Ukrainian ambassador to protest and demand an investigation.

Ukraine replied that it did not exclude a "deliberate provocation" by Russia, which would have oriented its missiles in such a way as to cause their interception over Belarus to "involve Belarus in its war".

According to the Ukrainian army, 54 of the 69 cruise missiles fired by Russia were shot down, as well as eleven Iranian-made Shahed drones.

Significant damage

But the shots that hit their targets caused further damage to an electricity network already badly damaged by nearly three months of bombardment.

Power cuts have multiplied while millions of Ukrainian civilians have already lived for weeks, in the middle of winter, with rationed electricity and problems with water and heating.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kouleba denounced "senseless barbarism" strikes launched against "peaceful Ukrainian cities just before the New Year".

The head of European diplomacy Josep Borrell blasted an attack which "indiscriminately destroys infrastructure and medical facilities, deliberately targets and kills civilians".

In the Kharkiv region (east), "a 50-year-old man" was killed, according to Governor Oleg Synegoubov.

"We must hold on"

After a series of military setbacks on the ground, the Kremlin changed tack and in October began regularly hitting Ukraine's transformers and power plants.

"We have to hold on, it's war, we have to survive and win," Iryna Ivaneyko, a tram driver in Lviv, the big city in western Ukraine, told AFP. deprived of electricity.

In kyiv, 40% of the inhabitants were without electricity during the day.

According to a military official, the anti-aircraft defense was able to shoot down all of the sixteen missiles that targeted the capital.

But debris fell on homes and a playground, injuring three, including a 14-year-old girl, according to municipal authorities.

In the Bortnychi district, half a dozen houses suffered damage, according to an AFP journalist.

In one street lay heaps of cables, planks and bricks.

In Odessa, a major port in the south-west, 21 missiles were shot down by Ukrainian anti-aircraft defense, according to Governor Maksym Marchenko.

But others have hit their target, again causing power outages.

Determined Russia

Russian President Vladimir Putin justified this tactic of massive strikes affecting millions of civilians in early December, in response, according to him, to Ukrainian attacks against Russian infrastructure.

He also always presents his invasion of Ukraine, which has lasted for more than ten months, at the cost of heavy losses, as "a necessity", assuring that the West was using Ukraine as a bridgehead. to threaten Russia.

On Wednesday, the head of Russian diplomacy Sergei Lavrov considered that the war in Ukraine had been "prepared by the West".

On the ground, the fighting continues to rage, with a particularly bloody battle for Bakhmout, an eastern city that Russia has been trying to conquer for months, and Kreminna, which Ukrainian forces are trying to retake.

On the eastern front, the "most critical" situation is observed around "Bakhmout and Soledar", in the Donetsk region, Mr. Zelensky also specified.

"The enemy has not given up on the crazy idea of ​​capturing the Donetsk region. Now they are setting themselves a goal: the New Year," he regretted Thursday evening.

Kherson, a major southern city from which Russian forces fled on November 11, is now the target of almost daily Russian strikes.

In Russia, anti-aircraft defense shot down a drone in the region of the key military base of Engels on Thursday, according to regional authorities.

Engels, located 500 kilometers from the Ukrainian border had already according to Moscow been hit Monday by a drone attack attributed to Ukraine.