The Russian-held city of Kherson in Ukraine was cut off from water and electricity supplies on Sunday after an airstrike and a key dam in the region was also damaged, local officials said.
It is the first time that Kherson – which fell to Moscow forces within days of the February offensive – has experienced such a power outage.
“There is temporarily no electricity or water supply in Kherson and some other areas in the region,” the city’s Moscow-based administration said on Telegram.
It was the result of an attack on the Beryslav-Kakhovka highway organized by the Ukrainian side, in which three concrete pylons of high-voltage power lines were damaged.
Energy specialists are working to solve the problem “quickly”, the Russian-backed authorities said, as they urged people to “keep calm”.
But the head of the regional administration, Yaroslav Yanuschevych, blamed Russia for the power outages.
He said that around 1.5 kilometers (just under a mile) of power lines had been destroyed in the town of Beryslav – the power supply was completely cut off because the “damage is quite extensive”.
“Probably there will be no light in Beryslav until the city is completely unoccupied,” he wrote on the Telegram social media platform.
“It is impossible to repair the lines immediately – there is a lack of specialists, of equipment, and the Russian invaders will not allow this.”
News of the outage followed reports that the Kakhovka Dam in the Russian-controlled Kherson region had been “damaged” by a Ukrainian strike.
“Today at 10:00 a.m. six HIMARS rockets arrived. Air defense units shot down five missiles, one hit a lock of the Kakhovka Dam, which was damaged,” Russian news agencies quoted local rescue services as saying.
RIA Novosti news agency quoted a local Moscow-backed official as saying the damage was not “critical”.
Ukraine has warned in recent weeks that Moscow’s forces intend to blow up the strategic facility to cause flooding.
The Kakhovka hydroelectric power station in southern Ukraine was captured by Moscow’s forces early in their offensive. It supplies water to Crimea annexed by Russia.
threat of flooding
For weeks, Russian forces have rained missiles and explosive drones on Ukraine’s infrastructure, as a major Ukrainian ground offensive – fueled by Western arms shipments – has pushed Russian troops back into parts of the country.
“We are also aware of the fact that the terrorist state is concentrating forces and means for a possible repetition of massive attacks on our infrastructure, especially energy,” said President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in his evening speech with a view to Russia.
“For this, Russia needed Iranian missiles in particular. We are preparing to respond to it,” said Zelenskyy.
Kiev Mayor Vitali Klitschko said he does not rule out a complete blackout in the Ukrainian capital. “We calculate different scenarios to withstand this and to be prepared,” he said.
Russian strikes last month destroyed about a third of Ukraine’s power plants and the government has urged Ukrainians to save as much electricity as possible.
But so far Ukraine has rarely attacked Russian-held civilian power infrastructure in Moscow-annexed territory, preferring to target Russian army supply lines.
Moscow’s occupying forces in Kherson have vowed to turn the city into a “fortress” as Ukraine mounts a counter-offensive in the south.
Russian forces have been organizing a civilian withdrawal from the Kherson region for weeks while Ukrainian troops advance in what Kyiv calls “deportations.”
Moscow-installed Kherson Governor Vladimir Saldo said he would move people further into the region or to Russia because of the risk of a “massive missile attack.”
Destroying the dam would result in flooding of the left bank of the Dnipro River, he said.
Zelenskyi said last month that Russian forces mined the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station with the intention of blowing it up.
Its destruction could cause a flash flood for hundreds of thousands of people, he warned.
He said the disruption to water supplies in the south could also affect the cooling systems at the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant – the largest in Europe.
Meanwhile, a Taiwanese man who volunteered to fight in Ukraine has died on the battlefield, Taipei’s foreign ministry said, believed to be the first person from the island to be killed in the conflict.
And in a final address during his visit to Bahrain on Sunday, Pope Francis urged the community to “pray for Ukraine, which is suffering so much” and for an end to the war.