Russian drones wreak havoc across Ukraine as Kremlin assault on energy infrastructure continues

Russian drone strikes left one person dead and two others wounded in the village of Zelene in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, the Ukrainian National Police announced on Saturday, as Russian shelling and airstrikes continued across the country.

Two Geran-3 drones hit the village of Zelene, damaging six buildings, the police continued. The Donetsk region suffered 1,387 hostile attacks across the day, with the cities of Dobropillia and Kostiantynivka and multiple villages also coming under fire. Some 16 civilian objects were damaged, including 11 residential buildings, according to police.

In the northeastern city of Kharkiv, a woman was injured in Russian shelling, according to the police, while in the southeastern Zaporizhzhia region, three civilians were injured in Russian airstrikes, while the wider region was subjected to 743 drone, missile and artillery strikes. In the southeastern city of Kherson, six people were injured, including three medics, when a hospital was hit by Russian shells.

In the eastern Dnipropetrovsk region, over 50,000 people were left without power after Russian strikes damaged energy infrastructure, the regional authorities reported on Saturday, while two people were injured after a fire broke out in the city of Kryvyi Rih. Heat and water remained cut off for many residents of the capital Kyiv, according to Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko.

Commenting on the relentless onslaught against civilian targets in the country, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Moscow of using cold weather as a “tool of terror” amid heightened tension internationally after Russia’s second-ever deployment of the nuclear-capable Oreshnik ballistic missile in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv on Thursday.