Russian missile barrage hits Kyiv power plants, at least nine killed across Ukraine

Russia launched a large missile and drone attack on Ukraine overnight into Wednesday, striking energy facilities in Kyiv and other regions and killing at least nine people across the country, according to Ukrainian officials cited by Al Jazeera.

In the capital, Ukraine's State Emergency Service reported three deaths. Two people died after a strike set fire to an apartment block in the Desnianskyi district, and one person was killed in the Holosiivskyi district. Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko said more than 20 people were injured, including a child, and that the strike on energy facilities caused power cuts in the city. The energy firm DTEK reported emergency outages in several districts.

Ceasefire under strain

The attack came only days after US President Donald Trump announced on 11 October that Russia and Ukraine had agreed to pause attacks on each other's energy infrastructure. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the strike deliberate and said Russia had violated the arrangement. He said the main target was one of Kyiv's key combined heat and power plants and complained that Ukraine had received no early warning from Western partners.

Russia's Defence Ministry described the operation as a massive strike on communications and energy sites in the Kyiv and Kharkiv regions, which it said served Ukraine's armed forces and defence industry. Deaths were also reported in the Volyn, Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhia regions.

Drones fired at Russia

Ukraine also launched large numbers of drones. Russia's military said it shot down several hundred Ukrainian drones overnight, many of them near Moscow, figures that could not be independently verified. Sberbank said one of its data centres in the Saratov region was hit but kept operating normally.

Separately, a technology adviser to Zelenskyy said SpaceX had introduced speed limits on Starlink terminals in moving vehicles without warning, disrupting some Ukrainian military operations.

Why it matters

Attacks on energy infrastructure ahead of winter threaten heating and power for millions of Ukrainians, and the collapse of a short-lived energy truce would cloud wider peace efforts. For India, a prolonged conflict keeps pressure on global energy prices, which are already elevated because of tensions in the Gulf.