Key Energy Facilities Across Ukraine Targeted in Overnight Strike.

A barrage of missiles and drones were launched by Russia early Saturday morning against Ukraine. Energy facilities across five regions of Ukraine were damaged, officials claim. 

Ukraine’s National power Grid operator company Ukrenergo said that the attack carried out against energy sites affected the regions of eastern Donetsk, southeastern Zaporizhzhia, Dnipropetrovsk regions, central Kyrovohrad region, and Ivano-Frankivsk region. 

This attack comes shortly after both Germany and the United States authorized use of some American weapons against invading Russian forces. 

The company claimed that the attack which happened early hours of saturday was the sixth complex missile and drone attack since March which was carried out against civilian energy infrastructure. A successful attack of this kind may kill power for large areas of civilian population who have been displaced already. 

The damage to energy infrastructure

As civilian infrastructure was targeted, there was bound to be collateral damage, officials across Ukraine have reported a number of civilian injuries.

Twelve people, consisting of eight children, have had to be hospitalized after a strike which occurred near two houses they were seeking shelter in. This was claimed by Governor Oleh Syniehubov to have occurred in the Kharkiv region. The attack was similar in nature to the ones going on since March.

Ukrainian air force commander claims most of the projectiles were shot down. According to him, air defense systems shot down 35 of the 53 Russian missiles and 46 of the 47 Russian drones.

Further, DTEK, which is Ukraine’s largest private sector energy generating company, claimed that two of its thermal power plants were hit and had sustained “serious damage”.

Officers in the region reported that firefighters were dispatched to multiple locations after the strike. They were reported to be actively extinguishing fires in the aftermath with no immediate report of casualties.

The War until now

Stretching on for the past two years, the war has been extremely taxing on both sides. Although accurate figures have been hard to verify with both sides claiming significantly different figures.

However, estimates can be made. The United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defense has estimated that around 500,000 Russian troops have been killed or wounded since the outbreak of the war. In May, it added, the average personnel casualties were over 1,2200 per day.

Although initially there was much vigor from them, the past two years have chipped away at the resilience of both sides. Forced conscription similar to abduction has made the war unpopular on the Russian side while the vast territories lost by Ukraine and its hastily put together defense paints a bleak story for the defenders. 

New developments with Ukraine

With the approval of the White house to use American weapons on Russian forces, tensions between Russia and the United States reached new heights.

Ukrainian president Volodomyr Zelensky reached Singapore on Saturday for the annual Shangri-La security summit. Seeking support to hold a “peace summit” this month in Switzerland, he is expected to hold talks with US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin among others. 

The focus on the conflict has been on making Ukraine a part of NATO and thus under the protection of all its then allies. However, that process has been difficult with significant resistance on the part of Russia.

Estonia’s Prime minister Kaja Kallas made a statement on Saturday to the BBC that having the possibility of Russian victory is off the table, and that Plan A should be stopping Russia.

He claimed that even after losing some territories, if Ukraine were to join NATO, it would be enough to consider it a victory. Estonia’s government has put more than 1% of its GDP into fighting the ongoing invasion and has consistently supported the country.