Around half a million energy customers in eastern Ukraine’s occupied Donetsk region were left without power on Monday morning following what Kremlin-installed officials in the area described as Ukrainian drone attacks on the electrical grid.
“The enemy tried to damage energy infrastructure using strike drones last night,” Denis Pushilin, the Moscow-backed head of the Donetsk region, wrote on his Telegram channel.
Pushilin said that the cities of Donetsk, Makiivka, Horlivka and Yasynuvata were still without power, but added that emergency crews managed to restore electricity in Horlivka and parts of Donetsk and Makiivka later in the morning.
State media reported late-night blackouts across four districts in the regional capital, Donetsk. Meanwhile, pro-Ukrainian Telegram channels claimed that a fire had broken out at the Chaikine electrical substation near Makiivka.
Inside Russia, authorities in the central Ulyanovsk region said that air defense systems repelled a Ukrainian attack on a key electrical substation that links the regional energy grid to those in the nearby republics of Mordovia and Chuvashia, as well as the Samara region.
No one was reported injured in that attack, and power generation was said to be working as usual.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said its air defense systems downed 36 Ukrainian drones across the country overnight. It also reported the capture of three villages across eastern Ukraine.
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