Nearly two-thirds of energy customers in eastern Ukraine’s occupied Donetsk region were left without power on Tuesday following a second consecutive night of Ukrainian strikes on local energy infrastructure, Kremlin-installed officials said.
Describing the overnight Ukrainian attacks as “unprecedented,” Denis Pushilin, the Moscow-backed head of the Donetsk region, said the strikes targeted the Zuivska and Starovesheve power stations.
“At the moment, 65% of customers are without electricity,” Pushilin wrote in a message on Telegram around noon local time. “Unfortunately, rolling power outages are possible.”
The Kremlin-installed official said the overnight Ukrainian strikes also forced an unspecified number of water filtration plants and boiler houses for centralized heating networks offline, leaving residents in multiple towns without water and heating.
More than 376,000 customers and 14 healthcare facilities were impacted by the outages, according to the pro-Kremlin outlet DNR News.
Pushilin said classes at schools in the partially occupied region would take place only in buildings that still had heating. DNR News reported that nearly 50 schools were without heating.
The temperature in the capital city Donetsk is forecast to drop to around 8 degrees Celsius (46 degrees Fahrenheit) on Tuesday night. On Wednesday, a high of 12 C (53 F) and a low of 7 C (44 F) are expected in the city.
Tuesday’s outages come amid a second night of reported Ukrainian attacks on occupied parts of the eastern Donetsk region. On Monday, air attacks left around half a million energy customers without power, according to Kremlin-backed authorities.
The affected cities — Donetsk, Makiivka, Horlivka, Yasynuvata and surrounding areas — had a combined pre-war population of more than 1 million.
Ukraine has not commented on either Monday’s or Tuesday’s reported attacks.
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