Massive Russian strikes in Ukraine, the largest in weeks, killed at least six people on Thursday and deprived part of the population of power, as well as the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant.
Russia has qualified these bombings, which it claims to have carried out in particular with the help of new Kinjal hypersonic missiles, as “reprisals” for an incursion into its territory on March 2 by Ukrainian “saboteurs”.
At the same time, the pro-Russian separatists of Transnistria, in Moldova, claimed to have thwarted an attack that kyiv would have prepared against its leaders, raising fears of new tensions in this unstable territory located in the south-west of Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has denounced Russian “miserable tactics” after bombings that hit nine regions of the country and its capital kyiv, and targeted energy infrastructure.
According to the Ukrainian army, the anti-aircraft defense shot down 34 of the 81 missiles launched by Moscow, and four Iranian-made Shahed explosive drones.
Since October, after several military setbacks, Russia has regularly bombarded Ukraine’s key energy facilities with missiles and drones, plunging millions into darkness and cold.
These strikes have been fewer in recent weeks. But on Thursday, Ukrainian authorities said missiles had targeted ten regions at dawn, in the east, south and west, as well as kyiv.
In the Lviv region, a shooting in a residential area killed at least five people, the governor said, while the governor of the Dnipro region told him that a 34-year-old man had been killed.
Russian artillery also shelled Kherson, killing two people at a transport stop and a third at a nearby store, local authorities said.
The mayor of Kharkiv, a large city in the northeast near the Russian border, Igor Terekhov, announced that the entire city was without electricity, water and heating.
“Russia is trying to completely destroy the civilian infrastructure of Ukraine, that’s why we have to provide (it) with what to defend itself,” reacted the head of EU diplomacy, Josep Borrell, from Stockholm.
Risk of nuclear accident
The gigantic Zaporijjia nuclear power plant, occupied by the Russian army in southern Ukraine, was also cut off from the Ukrainian electricity grid on Thursday after a Russian strike, announced the Ukrainian operator Energoatom.
“We are playing with fire and if we allow this situation to continue, one day our luck will change,” warned from Vienna the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Rafael Grossi.
According to Energoatom, the Ukrainian operator, Russian “missile attacks” led to the disconnection of the last line still connecting the plant to the network, and emergency diesel generators were started to ensure a minimum supply of security systems.
But the operator warned of a risk of nuclear accident if the external power supply was not restored.
The Russian occupation administration confirmed the launch of these diesel generators, but indicated that this measure was linked to a “short circuit” on another power line, without specifying the cause.
In kyiv, Mayor Vitali Klitschko reported several explosions in the south and then the west of the city, where police said at least three people were injured.
On Prospekt Peremoguy, in the west of the capital, three cars parked near a high apartment building were charred, noted an AFP correspondent, and several others damaged.
“There was a very strong explosion,” testifies Igor Iéjov, 60, who evacuated the building with his wife. “When it happens very close to you, it’s really a feeling of fear. »
The military administration claimed that 40% of users in the capital were deprived of heating. Preventive power cuts, according to the authorities, are also still in effect in some neighborhoods.
Power cuts were also reported in the Odessa region.
Tensions in Transnistria
In Moldova, pro-Russian separatists in Transnistria assured Thursday that Ukraine had wanted to carry out an attack in the center of their capital, Tiraspol, to “eliminate” their leaders and cause “a large number of victims”.
Moldova and the West regularly accuse Moscow of using Transnistria to further destabilize neighboring Ukraine.
These accusations and large-scale strikes also follow a meeting on Wednesday of the 27 EU defense ministers in Stockholm, with their Ukrainian counterpart Oleksiï Reznikov, to negotiate a plan for the delivery of shells and ammunition to Kiev, which could be increased to two billion euros.
Moreover, in eastern Ukraine, the battle for the symbolic city of Bakhmout continues to rage.
After announcing the day before the capture of the eastern part of the city, the boss of the Russian paramilitary organization Wagner, Evgeny Prigojine, said Thursday that his fighters had conquered the small village of Doubovo-Vassylivka, north of Bakhmout.
Bakhmout could fall “in the next few days”, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg warned on Wednesday, adding, however, that “this does not necessarily reflect any turning point in the war”.