Russia pummeled Ukraine’s energy infrastructure with a large-scale drone and missile attack on Saturday, injuring at least 19 people, local officials said.
The Ukrainian military reported that it had downed 35 out of the 53 missiles launched at targets across the country overnight on June 1, as well as 46 out of 47 attack drones.
Injuries were reported by officials across the country, including in Ukraine’s western Lviv region and the central Dnipropetrovsk region.
Twelve people, including eight children, were hospitalized after a strike close to two houses where they were sheltering in the Kharkiv region, said Gov. Oleh Syniehubov.
The strikes were part of a series of sustained attacks by Russia against Ukraine’s power grid, which have been ongoing since March. Ukraine’s largest private energy firm, DTEK, said that two of its power plants had been seriously damaged in what it said was the sixth attack on the company’s plants in two and a half months.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s Energy Minister, Herman Halushchenko, said in a statement on social media that energy infrastructure in the Zaporizhzhia, Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Kirovohrad, and Ivano-Frankivsk regions had also been targeted. (The damage to Ukraine’s energy infrastructure in recent weeks has forced the leaders of the war-ravaged country to institute nationwide rolling blackouts.)