Seven people were killed when Russian strikes struck an apartment complex and energy facilities in Ukraine.

Seven people were killed and twelve injured after a Russian drone crashed into an apartment complex in eastern Ukraine early on Saturday when many people were asleep, according to Ukrainian police.

According to Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha, “Russia once again targeted substations that power the Khmelnytskyi and Rivne nuclear power plants,” he posted on X.

The assault on Ukraine’s fourth-largest city, Dnipro, was a component of a massive Russian drone and missile assault that targeted power infrastructure throughout the nation. According to a local official, it also killed an employee of an energy business in Kharkiv, further north.

A drone struck an apartment building in the city of Dnipro, killing three people and injuring twelve more. According to regional officials, three people were murdered in the southeast Zaporizhzhia area and one in the farther north Kharkiv region.

According to the emergency services, a fire broke out in the nine-story building in Dnipro, destroying many units. Three people’s dead were retrieved by rescuers, and two children were among the injured.

Russia launched 45 missiles, including 32 ballistic missiles, and 458 drones in all. According to the air force, 25 places were hit, and 406 drones and nine missiles were shot down and neutralized by Ukrainian forces.

According to a Facebook post by Ukrainian Energy Minister Svitlana Grynchuk, authorities turned off electricity in a number of areas as a result of the attacks.

The war for the strategically important city of Pokrovsk in eastern Ukraine has reached a critical point, with Moscow and Kyiv trying to convince US President Donald Trump that they can prevail in combat.

According to state news outlet Tass, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov announced on Saturday that preparations for a potential Russian nuclear test have started in response to President Vladimir Putin’s directive.

Following remarks made by Trump that seemed to imply that Washington might resume its own atomic tests for the first time in thirty years, Putin issued his directive on Wednesday.

Attacks against energy sites

Russia has been killing and injuring civilians in Ukraine with almost daily drone and missile attacks. According to the Kremlin, its sole targets are connected to Kyiv’s war effort. The overnight strikes, according to Russia’s Defense Ministry on Saturday, targeted military and energy facilities that provide supplies to Ukrainian forces.

The US-led diplomatic efforts to end the nearly four-year conflict have not had any effect on the battlefield, as Moscow and Kyiv have been attacking each other’s energy targets virtually every day.

The goal of Ukraine’s long-range drone attacks against Russian refineries is to deny Moscow the money it needs to continue the conflict through oil exports. According to Kyiv officials, Russia is attempting to “weaponize winter” by destroying the Ukrainian electrical grid and denying citizens access to running water, heat, and light.

According to an X post by Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko, the missiles caused damage to “several major energy facilities” in the central Poltava region and the areas surrounding Kharkiv and Kyiv.

The state energy firm of Ukraine, Centrenergo, said in a statement on Saturday that the nocturnal strikes had once again forced its thermal power units offline. Russian attacks last year damaged and then repaired Centernergo’s three plants in the Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Donetsk areas.

Two days after Ukraine claimed it used long-range drones to bomb a major oil refinery in the southern Volgograd region, Russian soldiers on Saturday thwarted a “massive” nighttime strike on energy installations in the region, according to Governor Andrei Bocharov. Bocharov went on to say that while the strike caused no injuries, it did knock off power in several areas of the northwest of the province. Kyiv did not immediately comment.

Russia’s military destroyed 82 Ukrainian drones overnight, including eight over the Volgograd region, according to a statement released by the country’s defense ministry on Saturday. Regional Governor Roman Busarin said a Ukrainian drone strike in the nearby Saratov region knocked out windows in an apartment building, injuring two people.

Oil from Russia

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy promised on Friday to “find a way to ensure there is no Russian oil in Europe” after weeks of long-range attacks on Russia’s energy infrastructure that Ukraine claims both contributes to and directly fuels the Kremlin’s conflict.

Shortly after Hungary obtained a one-year reprieve from recent US sanctions aimed at big Russian oil producers, Zelenskyy addressed media.

“We won’t permit it. There, we will not allow the Russians to sell oil. At a news briefing following a meeting with top Ukrainian military officials, he stated, “It’s a matter of time,” without going into detail about how Kyiv would try to stop the oil supplies.

Landlocked Hungary has no practical substitutes for Russian crude, and replacing such supplies would lead to an economic meltdown, according to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, a Trump admirer who has long called on the European Union to mend fences with Moscow. Critics contest that assertion.

Last month, the Trump administration announced penalties against Russia’s two largest state-affiliated oil companies, Rosneft and Lukoil. This action may subject their overseas purchasers, particularly those in China, India, and Central Europe, to secondary sanctions.

Following Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, the majority of the EU’s 27 member states drastically cut back on or stopped importing Russian fossil fuels, although Hungary and Slovakia continued to receive pipeline deliveries. In fact, Hungary has raised the proportion of Russian oil in its energy mix.

Defending Pokrovsk

A line of heavily defended cities known as the “fortress belt” of Donetsk, which is essential to Ukraine’s defense of the area, includes the city of Pokrovsk, which is located along the eastern front line. According to observers, it might also be a crucial moment in shaping Washington’s position and the direction of peace talks.

The Russian Defense Ministry said Saturday that Russian troops had advanced close to Pokrovsk and the neighboring town of Myrnohrad, claiming both were surrounded. Additionally, it said that Ukrainian soldiers were encircled by Russian forces at Kupiansk, a vital railway hub in the northeastern Kharkiv region. Moscow made claims that Kyiv did not immediately address and that could not be independently confirmed.

Reconnecting the nuclear facility to the grid

The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine, which is located in a region governed by Russia, has been linked to the electrical grid via a second transmission line, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

After the plant’s last external power line was cut on September 23 in strikes that Russia and Ukraine both blamed on one another, it was left running on diesel backup generators for a month. A single transmission line was used to reestablish the link to the grid on October 23.

In order to prevent any catastrophic nuclear accidents, the plant, which is not currently in operation, requires steady power to cool its six shutdown reactors and spent fuel. The facility has seen ten instances of external power outages and emergency diesel generators due to fighting since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion.

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