- Parts
of Odesa in Ukraine were without power after a Russian drone strike hit two energy
facilities. - President
Volodymyr Zelensky said it could take days to restore electricity. - Zelensky
also said in his nightly address that Norway was sending $100 million to aid in
restoring Ukraine’s energy system.
KYIV
– All non-critical infrastructure in the Ukrainian port of Odesa was without
power after Russia used Iranian-made drones to hit two energy facilities,
leaving 1.5 million people without power, officials said on Saturday.
“The
situation in the Odesa region is very difficult,” President Volodymyr
Zelensky said in his nightly video address.
“Unfortunately,
the hits were critical, so it takes more than just time to restore
electricity… It doesn’t take hours, but a few days, unfortunately.”
Since
October, Moscow has been targeting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure with large
waves of missile and drone strikes.
Norway
was sending $100 million to help restore Ukraine’s energy system, Zelensky
said.
Serhiy
Bratchuk, spokesperson for Odesa’s regional administration, said electricity
for the city’s population will be restored “in the coming days”, while
complete restoration of the networks may take two to three months.
Workers repair high-voltage power lines cut by recent missile strikes near Odesa on 7 December 2022, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Bratchuk
said an earlier Facebook post by the region’s administration, advising some
people to consider evacuating, was being investigated by Ukraine’s security
services as “an element of the hybrid war” by Russia.
That
post has since been deleted.
Iranian-made drones
“Not
a single representative of the authorities in the region made any calls for the
evacuation of the inhabitants of Odesa and the region,” Bratchuk said.
Odesa
had more than 1 million residents before the 24 February invasion that Russia
calls a “special military operation” to “denazify” its
smaller neighbour.
Kyiv
says Russia has launched hundreds of Iranian-made Shahed-136 drones at targets
in Ukraine, describing the attacks as war crimes due to their devastating
effect on civilian life. Moscow says its attacks are militarily legitimate and
that it does not target civilians.
Ukraine’s
prosecutor general’s office said two power facilities in Odesa region were hit
by Shahed-136 drones.
Ukraine’s
armed forces said on Facebook that 15 drones had been launched against targets
in the southern regions of Odesa and Mykolaiv, and 10 had been shot down.
Tehran
denies supplying the drones to Moscow. Kyiv and its Western allies say that is
a lie.
Britain’s
defence ministry said on Saturday that it believed Iran’s military support for
Russia was likely to increase in the coming months, including possible
deliveries of ballistic missiles.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
