The Nepal Weekly 
August 27, 2024
Russia threw hundreds of drones and missiles at Ukraine on Monday, killing at least four people and battering the country’s already weakened energy grid, triggering blackouts, according to officials. The barrage was the largest in weeks from Moscow and comes as Kyiv mounts a major offensive into Russia’s Kursk region, where it has been battling for nearly three weeks and on Sunday claimed to be advancing.
“There is a lot of damage in the energy sector. Restoration work is already underway,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky admitted in a video message on Telegram.
State-owned electricity supplier Ukrenergo announced emergency power cuts to stabilise the system following the barrage, while train schedules were disrupted.
Explosions from what appeared to be air defences could be heard in the capital Kyiv early on Monday, as residents rushed to take shelter in metro stations, AFP journalists reported.
“We are always worried. We have been under stress for almost three years now,” said 34-year-old lawyer Yulia Voloshyna, who was taking shelter in the Kyiv metro.
“It was very scary, to be honest. You don’t know what to expect,” she added. The Russian defence ministry said it had struck energy infrastructure used to support Ukraine’s defence industry. Since invading in February 2022, Russia has launched repeated large-scale drone and missile attacks on Ukraine, including punishing attacks on energy facilities.
Railways hit
The attacks on Monday killed four people and wounded more than 20 others across the country, officials said.
In the central Dnipropetrovsk region, Russian bombardment killed a 69-year-old man, while missile attacks in the southern Zaporizhzhia region killed another, officials claimed.
In the central region of Zhytomyr, Russian missile and drone attacks killed one person and wounded several others, authorities said. And in the western city of Lutsk, Russian bombardments damaged an apartment building and an infrastructure facility, killing one person and injuring five others, mayor Igor Polishchuk said.
Russia also attacked railway infrastructure in the northern Sumy region, injuring a man and damaging buildings, accprdomg tonational operator Ukrainian Railways.
“Some railway stations, which were also cut off from power due to the outage in the city’s networks, have been switched to backup generators.”.
Zelensky said Russia hit Ukraine with more than 100 missiles and around 100 Iranian-designed attack drones, and called for European airforces to help down them. “In our various regions of Ukraine, we could do much more to protect lives if the aviation of our European neighbours worked together with our F-16s and together with our air defence,” Zelensky mentioned in a post on social media.
