Russia hits Ukraine energy facilities despite ceasefire
Ron Popeski and Jekaterina Golubkova |
Russia has struck energy facilities in Ukraine’s capital, a top local official says, despite US President Donald Trump’s declaration of an energy infrastructure ceasefire between the warring nations.
The strikes killed one person and injured one more, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said on Wednesday on the Telegram app, adding the city faced power cuts because of the attack.
The ballistic missile attack was ongoing during the morning hours.
It came after President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Russian forces killed two people in a high-rise apartment and hit a thermal power plant in Kyiv in a ballistic missile strike on Tuesday.
He said the main target was energy infrastructure, it was unfair the capital had endured two attacks in 24 hours without warnings from Western allies and intelligence showed that more strikes were likely.
“Once again, no advance warning from our partners,” Zelenskiy said on Telegram.
“The facts show that the Russians do not consider themselves bound to abide by what the president of the United States said,” he said, referring to Trump’s announcement at the weekend of an energy ceasefire.
Kyiv relies heavily on US intelligence for early warnings of missile strikes, experts and officials say.
But Trump said Washington was still sharing intelligence even as he pressured Kyiv to halt attacks on Russian refineries.
Reuters and other media have reported that US officials have threatened to cut off intelligence sharing and weapons sales to Ukraine unless it stops attacking Russian refineries.
“We are helping them, and we are sharing intel,” Trump told reporters.
“We want the war to end, so we’re working with them and Russia on getting the war to end.”
Trump said both Russian President Vladimir Putin and Zelenskiy want the war to end but “there is a lot of hatred between the two of them” and they “don’t know how to get there”.
Without mentioning any energy facilities, the Russian defence ministry said its forces had hit two ships delivering military and dual-use cargo to Ukraine’s port city of Mykolaiv.
The ministry said other targets struck in Ukraine on Tuesday included a Pulp Mill Print facility, where the production of missiles and long-range unmanned aerial vehicles had been organised, and a logistics warehouse in the Kyiv region used to store Ukrainian strike drones.
The Tuesday attack on a high-rise building also injured 21 people, Klitschko said.
In the Volga River town of Balakovo in Russia, which invaded Ukraine in 2022, drones killed one person and damaged houses, a regional governor said on Telegram on Wednesday.
Balakovo is home to a data centre of Russia’s top lender Sberbank, a nuclear power plant and a hydropower station, whose dam spans the Volga River, among other facilities, but governor Roman Busargin said all infrastructure was operating as usual.
Trump was also asked about a deal involving Russian diesel that has drawn criticism from US lawmakers in both parties, who say it appears to violate US restrictions on Russian energy imports imposed over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Asked whether Russia could use proceeds from the diesel deal to buy more bombs, Trump sidestepped the question.
“That’s a diesel deal, not for us. That’s being released into the world. That’s not being released to us.”
Reuters