Russia admits ‘state of war’ amid huge strikes on Ukraine

Russia pounded Ukrainian power facilities yesterday in an attack described by Kyiv as the largest airstrike on its energy infrastructure in two years of war, and portrayed by Moscow as revenge for Ukrainian attacks during its presidential election.The missile and drone attack hit a vast dam over the Dnipro river, killed at least five people and left more than a million others without power, forcing Kyiv to seek emergency electricity supplies from Poland, Romania and Slovakia, Kyiv officials said.The strikes, which Kyiv said caused blackouts in seven regions, revived memories of the winter of 2022-23 when Moscow regularly bombed Ukraine’s power grid.The Russian defence ministry said the airstrike was carried out in retaliation for Ukrainian shelling and cross-border raids last week as Russians took part in a election that handed President Vladimir Putin a fifth term."The world sees the targets of Russian terrorists as clearly as possible: power plants and energy supply lines, a hydroelectric dam, ordinary residential buildings, even a trolleybus," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said.Condemning the attack, Ukrainian Energy Minister German Galushchenko said: "The goal is not just to damage, but to try again, like last year, to cause a large-scale failure of the country’s energy system."Russia denies deliberately targeting civilians although the war that began with its full-scale invasion in February 2022 has killed thousands of people, uprooted millions and destroyed towns and cities.Moscow says Ukrainian power facilities are legitimate targets and that such attacks are aimed at weakening Kyiv’s military.Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a Russian publication yesterday that Moscow saw itself as in a "state of war" because of the West’s intervention on Kyiv’s side. The comment marked a rhetorical break from the "special military operation" language that Moscow officials have used throughout the invasion, in an apparent move to prepare Russians for a longer and harder struggle.European Union Council president Charles Michel said Russia’s comments about war with Europe showed the importance of the EU building its own defence industry.Two people were killed in the western Khmelnytskyi region and three in Zaporizhzhia in the southeast, including at least one at the dam, said the local administration and general prosecutor’s office. Twenty-six people were reported injured. Ukraine’s largest dam, the DniproHES in the city of Zaporizhzhia, was hit eight times, an official from the Ukrainian prosecutor’s office said. The state hydropower company said there was no risk of a breach. The company’s director, Ihor Syrota, said both its power blocks and the dam itself had been damaged. One of the blocks sustained two direct strikes, he said.