Much of the eastern Ukrainian region suffered power outages and water cuts on Sunday. The outage is likely to affect about nine million people in the region, including territories controlled by Russia. “There is no electricity or water in several settlements. Emergency services are working to control the fires in the affected areas,” Oleg Sinegubov, governor of the Kharkiv region, said in a statement on social media. Similar reports came in the evening from Sumy, Dnipropetrovsk, Poltava, Zaporizhzhia and Odesa regions. The Ukrainian president pointed the finger of blame at Russia, accusing Moscow of deliberately hitting civilian infrastructure. “Complete blackout in Kharkiv and Donetsk regions, partial in Zaporizhzhia, Dnipropetrovsk and Sumy regions,” Zelenskyy said in a statement on social media, blaming “Russian terrorists”. “There are no military installations,” he added. “The goal is to deprive people of light and heat.”
‘Totally Dark’
Al Jazeera’s Hoda Abdel Hamid, reporting from Kharkiv, reported that “there are power outages in five areas in the northeastern and eastern parts of the country. What we’re hearing from officials is that the Russians have hit critical infrastructure. They don’t tell us what or where, but this city is in the fireproof zone. “We were on the streets when [the power outage] happened and as we drove back to our location everything was completely dark. not a single light was on. It was a very scary scene.” Officials in the Sumy, Dnipropetrovsk and Poltava regions said shortly after the blackout announcements that power had been restored. The Russian attacks also caused problems on the railways, with the national rail service announcing delays across the east, including in the country’s second-largest city, Kharkiv. Ukraine’s foreign ministry spokesman Oleg Nikolenko said the Russian attacks were an “act of desperation following the massive losses and retreat of Russia in eastern Ukraine.” The head of Dnipropetrovsk region Dmytro Reznichenko said: The Russians hit the energy infrastructure. They cannot accept defeat on the battlefield,” he said in a statement online. Meanwhile, AFP reporters in the Donetsk regional city of Kramatorsk confirmed that the cuts also affected one of the largest cities in the east still under Ukrainian control.
“Strategic victory for Ukraine”
The blackout came as Ukrainian forces claimed to have recaptured dozens of towns and villages in eastern Ukraine, forcing Russian troops to retreat on Saturday. The Ukrainian president on Sunday hailed his troops for “liberating” the key eastern city of Izyum in the Kharkiv region. In a speech to the nation marking 200 days since the start of Russia’s invasion, Zelensky thanked Ukrainian forces for “liberating hundreds of our towns and villages … and most recently Balaklia, Izium and Kupyansk,” citing three major hubs that were captured recently by the troops of Kiev. The withdrawal marked the biggest battlefield success for Kiev’s forces since they thwarted a Russian bid to seize the capital Kyiv at the start of the war. The official reason for the withdrawal was a strategic “regrouping” of the units. In the worst defeat for Moscow’s forces since they were pushed back from the outskirts of the capital Kiev in March, thousands of Russian soldiers left ammunition and equipment behind as they fled the city of Izyum, which they had used as a logistics hub. Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, on Sunday criticized the Russian military’s performance over the weekend. Ukrainian forces are pushing north into the Kharkiv region and advancing to its south and east, Ukraine’s army chief said on Sunday. Zelensky hailed the offensive as a potential breakthrough in the six-month-long war and said Winter could see further territorial gains if Kyiv receives more powerful weapons. Observers said Ukraine’s strategic gains in the east gave an “unwavering” international community evidence of its forces’ capabilities. “This is a strategic victory for Ukraine – far more significant than the defeat of the Russians in Kyiv in March,” Frank Ledwidge from the University of Portsmouth told Al Jazeera. He said it was strategic because it showed the Ukrainians could inflict casualties on the Russians. “But it’s also a demonstration of their capabilities and the combined arms of warfare, and the gathering of equipment and training that they’ve had over the last few months to take back an area of land that’s much larger than what the Russians have taken since April.” . “It is very important and shows the ability of Ukrainians with deception,” he added. “It’s an intelligence coup and it’s a remarkable demonstration of Russian incompetence, particularly in the intelligence sector.”
