Reuters reports:

Ukraine said Russia had destroyed almost a third of its power stations over the past week as Moscow stepped up a pre-winter campaign to strike infrastructure, a move the West says is a calculated attempt to disrupt and demoralise.

Missiles struck power generating facilities in a clutch of Ukrainian cities home to millions of people and several people were killed. Moscow acknowledged targeting energy plants, while Ukraine said water infrastructure had also been hit.

“The situation is critical now across the country … the whole country needs to prepare for electricity, water and heating outages,” Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the Ukrainian president’s office, told Ukrainian television.

At least one man died when a Russian missile reduced his apartment in the southern river port of Mykolaiv to rubble.

“They (Russians) probably get pleasure from this,” said Oleksandr, the owner of a local flower shop damaged in the attack. “They get pleasure from us feeling bad. I think they want us to bomb and shell (their) city buildings. But we won’t do that to be different from them.”

Another two people were reported killed in a strike on Kyiv.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Russia was continuing to try to terrorise and kill civilians. “Since Oct 10, 30% of Ukraine’s power stations have been destroyed, causing massive blackouts across the country,” he wrote on Twitter. [Continue reading…]