Russian strikes on Ukrainian power substations have left hundreds of thousands of people without electricity across 12 regions, officials said, as winter approaches. According to Deputy Energy Minister Artem Nekrasov, reported by The Hindu, the situation is most difficult in the Dnipropetrovsk and Kyiv regions.
Nekrasov said Russian attacks on energy facilities over the past 24 hours left some consumers without power in 12 Ukrainian regions. He said the situation remains most difficult in Dnipropetrovsk and Kyiv because of significant damage, according to The Hindu.
DTEK, a Ukrainian power company, said a Russian overnight attack on energy facilities in Dnipropetrovsk left more than 600,000 people without electricity, according to the Moscow Times. That is the only regional figure in the sources. No independent confirmation of the total number of people without power across all 12 regions is available.
France 24 reported that hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians were left without electricity after Russian airstrikes on the country’s energy infrastructure. Only a headline and a short excerpt of that report were available, so it gives no further detail. France 24 also reported that Moscow has intensified its attacks as winter approaches, with residents in Kyiv and elsewhere facing power cuts as temperatures fall.
The Hindu also reported figures attributed to a ministry, which it does not name in the source text. According to those figures, Russia deliberately attacked Ukraine’s energy and oil and gas sectors 128 times over the past week, recording 219 incidents that damaged or destroyed energy and oil and gas infrastructure. Because the ministry is unnamed, the attribution of these figures is unclear, and they come from a single outlet.
Accounts of the substation strikes differ. Russia’s Defense Ministry said its forces struck two power substations in the Dnipropetrovsk and Zhytomyr regions, which it said powered military-industrial enterprises, according to the Moscow Times. The Hindu, citing state news agencies, reports that Russia’s armed forces struck three power substations overnight on Monday, November 9, 2026. The sources differ on both the day and the number of substations.
Russia’s Defense Ministry also said its forces hit cargo vessels that it said were carrying military goods for Ukraine. Reuters could not independently verify these claims, and Ukraine gave no immediate comment. The sources also differ on the number of vessels: one in The Hindu and three in the Moscow Times.
The sources do not include an official response from Ukraine to the substation strikes. Beyond the Defense Ministry’s claims, they also contain no response from Russia to the attacks on power substations.
The sources do not say what comes next, and no timeline for restoring power is reported. Officials have described the situation as most difficult in Dnipropetrovsk and Kyiv, and temperatures are falling.
The Moscow Times notes that Russia’s Prosecutor General’s Office has designated it an ‘undesirable’ organization, which it says puts its staff at risk of prosecution.
Sources
This article was written with AI assistance from the published reporting listed above. It is part of the World Brief daily news podcast.