KYIV, Ukraine — A Russian drone crashed into an apartment building in eastern Ukraine early Saturday morning as many were sleeping, killing three people and injuring 12, Ukrainian authorities said.
The attack in Dnieper, Ukraine’s fourth-largest city, was part of a major Russian missile and drone strike across the country targeting electricity infrastructure. A worker of an energy company in Kharkiv, in the north, also died, a local official said.
In Dnieper, a fire broke out in a nine-story building and several apartments were destroyed, the Ministry of Emergency Situations reported. The rescuers found the bodies of three people, among the injured two children.
In total, Russia launched 458 drones and 45 missiles, including 32 ballistic missiles. Ukrainian forces shot down and neutralized 406 drones and nine missiles, the Air Force said, adding that 25 locations were hit.
Due to the terrorist attacks, the authorities cut off electricity in several regions, Ukraine’s Minister of Energy Sviatlana Grinchuk reported on Facebook.
In eastern Ukraine, the battle for the strategic city of Pokrovsk has reached a pivotal stage, with both Kyiv and Moscow scrambling to convince US President Donald Trump that they can win on the battlefield.
Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Saturday that work had begun on the preparation of plans for a possible Russian nuclear test at the behest of President Vladimir Putin, according to the state news agency TASS.
Putin’s order on Wednesday followed statements by Trump that appeared to suggest Washington would resume its own nuclear tests for the first time in three decades.
Russia attacks Ukraine almost daily with drones and missiles, killing and injuring civilians. The Kremlin says its only targets are related to Kiev’s military efforts. The Russian Ministry of Defense said on Saturday that the night strikes were carried out on military and energy facilities that supply Ukrainian forces.
Moscow and Kyiv have traded attacks on each other’s energy facilities on a near-daily basis as US-led diplomatic efforts to end the nearly four-year-old war have had little effect on the battlefield.
Ukraine’s long-range drone strikes on Russian oil refineries are aimed at depriving Moscow of the oil export revenue it needs to continue the war. Russia wants to paralyze Ukraine’s energy system and deprive civilians of access to heat, light and running water in what Kiev officials say is an attempt to “weaponize winter.”
In her post, Prime Minister of Ukraine Yulia Sviridenko stated that the strikes damaged “several large energy facilities” around Kharkiv and Kiev, as well as in the center of the Poltava region.
Thermal power plants under the control of the Ukrainian state energy company “Centrenergo” were shut down again due to night strikes, the company said in a statement on Saturday. Three factories of “Centrenergo” in Kyiv, Kharkiv and Donetsk regions were damaged as a result of Russian attacks last year and have since been restored.
Meanwhile, Russian forces repelled a “massive” nighttime strike on energy facilities in the southern Volgograd region, Governor Andrei Bacharov said Saturday, two days after Ukraine said it had struck a key oil refinery there with long-range drones. Bacharov added that as a result of the impact, electricity was cut off in some areas of the northwest of the region, but there were no victims. There were no immediate comments from Kyiv.
The Russian Ministry of Defense said on Saturday that it had shot down 82 Ukrainian drones overnight, including eight over the Volgograd region. Two people were injured in the neighboring Saratov region after a Ukrainian drone shot out windows in a residential building, the governor of the region, Roman Busarin, said.
After weeks of long-range strikes on Russia’s energy infrastructure, which Ukraine says are both funding and directly fueling the Kremlin’s war, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky vowed Friday to “find a way to ensure that there is no Russian oil in Europe.”
Zelensky spoke to reporters shortly after Hungary won a one-year exemption from recent US sanctions targeting major Russian oil producers.
“We will not allow it. We will not allow the Russians to sell oil there. It’s a matter of time,” he said at a briefing after a meeting with the top Ukrainian military leadership, without specifying how Kyiv might try to stop the flow of oil.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, a Trump ally who has long urged the European Union to restore ties with Moscow, says landlocked Hungary has no viable alternative to Russian oil and that replacing those supplies would lead to economic collapse. Critics dispute this claim.
Last month, the Trump administration announced sanctions against major Russian state oil companies Rosneft and Lukoil, which could subject their foreign buyers — including customers in Central Europe, India and China — to additional sanctions.
While most of the 27 EU member states have sharply reduced or stopped imports of Russian fossil fuels following Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Hungary and Slovakia have maintained pipeline supplies. Hungary even increased the share of Russian oil in its energy balance.
The city of Pokrovsk is located along the eastern front line, part of what has been called Donetsk’s “belt of fortresses,” a line of heavily fortified cities that are critical to Ukraine’s defense in the region. It could also be a key moment that will influence Washington’s position and affect the progress of peace talks, analysts say.
Russian troops advanced in the area of Pokrovsky and the nearby city of Mirnograd, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Saturday, saying both were encircled. It also says that Russian forces have surrounded Ukrainian defenders in Kupiansk, a key railway junction in the north-east of the Kharkiv region. Kyiv did not immediately react to Moscow’s statements, which could not be independently verified.
Joanna Kozlovska reported from London.
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