Power Restored to 800,000 in Kyiv after Major Russian Strikes on Ukraine’s Energy Grid
Power was restored to over 800,000 residents in Kyiv on Saturday, a day after Russia launched major attacks on the Ukrainian power grid that caused blackouts across much of the country.
Ukraine’s largest private energy company, DTEK, said Saturday that “the main work to restore the power supply” had been completed, but that some localized outages were still affecting the Ukrainian capital following Friday’s “massive” Russian attacks.
Russian drone and missile strikes wounded at least 20 people in Kyiv, damaged residential buildings and triggered blackouts across swaths of Ukraine early Friday.
Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko described the attack as “one of the largest concentrated strikes” against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.
Russia’s Defense Ministry on Friday said the strikes had targeted energy facilities supplying Ukraine’s military. It did not give details of those facilities, but said Russian forces used Kinzhal hypersonic missiles and strike drones against them.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly address Friday that Russia was taking advantage of the world being “almost entirely focused on the prospect of establishing peace in the Middle East,” and called for strengthening Ukraine’s air defense systems and tighter sanctions on Russia.
“Russian assets must be fully used to strengthen our defense and ensure recovery,” he said in the video, posted to X.
Meanwhile, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said in a joint statement on Friday they were ready to move toward using “in a coordinated way, the value of the immobilized Russian sovereign assets to support Ukraine’s armed forces and thus bring Russia to the negotiation table.”
The statement added they aimed to do this “in close cooperation with the United States.”
