KYIV (Reuters) – All non-critical infrastructure in the Ukrainian port of Odesa was without power after Russia hit two energy facilities with drones, leaving 1.5 million people without power, officials say.
“The situation in the Odesa region is very difficult,” President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address.
“Unfortunately, the hits were critical, so it takes more than just time to restore electricity... It doesn’t take hours, but a few days, unfortunately.”
Since October, Moscow has been targeting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure with large waves of missile and drone strikes.
Serhiy Bratchuk, spokesperson for Odesa’s regional administration, said electricity for the city’s population will be restored “in the coming days,” while complete restoration of the networks may take two to three months.
Bratchuk said an earlier Facebook post by the region’s administration, advising some people to consider evacuating, was being investigated by Ukraine’s security services as “an element of the hybrid war” by Russia.
That post has since been deleted.
“Not a single representative of the authorities in the region made any calls for the evacuation of the inhabitants of Odesa and the region,” Bratchuk said.
Odesa had more than 1 million residents before the Feb. 24 Russia war to “denazify” its smaller neighbor.
Meanwhile, Ukraine attacked Melitopol in the country’s southeast on Saturday evening, the Russian-installed and exiled Ukrainian authorities of the strategically located city said.
The pro-Moscow authorities said a missile attack killed two people and wounded 10, while the exiled mayor said scores of “invaders” were killed.
Reuters could not independently verify the reports of the attacks or deaths.
“Air defence systems destroyed two missiles, four reached their targets,” Yevgeny Balitsky, the governor of the occupied part of the Zaporizhzhia region, said on the Telegram messaging app.
He said a “recreation center” where people were dining was destroyed in the Ukrainian attack with HIMARS missiles.