It is the first time Kherson — which fell to Moscow forces within days of their attack in February — has experienced such a blackout. “In Kherson and some other areas in the region, there is temporarily no electricity or water supply,” the Moscow-based city administration said on Telegram. He said it was “the result of an attack organized by the Ukrainian side on the Beryslav-Kakhovka highway that saw three concrete poles of high-voltage lines destroyed.” Energy experts were working to “quickly” resolve the issue, the Russian-backed authorities said, as they urged people to “remain calm”. But the head of the regional administration, Yaroslav Yanusevic, blamed Russia for the blackouts. He said that in the city of Berislav about 1.5 kilometers (just under a mile) of power lines had been damaged – cutting off power completely because “the damage is quite extensive”. “Probably, there will be no light in Beryslav until the city is completely decaptured,” he wrote on the social networking platform Telegram. “It is impossible to repair the lines in time – there is a lack of specialists, equipment, and the Russian invaders will not allow this to happen.” News of the outage followed reports that the Kakhovka dam in the Russian-controlled Kherson region was “destroyed” by a Ukrainian strike. “Today at 10:00 a.m. six HIMARS rockets were hit. Air defense units shot down five missiles, one hit a lock of the Kakhovka dam, which was damaged,” Russian news agencies reported, citing local emergency services. The RIA Novosti news agency cited a Moscow-backed local official as saying the damage was not “critical”. Ukraine in recent weeks warned that Moscow’s forces intended to blow up the strategic installation to cause flooding. The Kakhovka hydroelectric dam in southern Ukraine was captured by Moscow forces at the start of their offensive. It supplies water to the Russian-annexed Crimea.
Flood threat
For weeks, Russian forces have been firing missiles and explosive drones at Ukraine’s infrastructure as a major Ukrainian ground offensive — fueled by Western arms deliveries — has pushed Russian troops back into parts of the country. “We are also aware of the fact that the terrorist state is amassing forces and means for a possible repetition of massive attacks on our infrastructure, primarily energy,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his afternoon address, referring to Russia. “Specifically, Russia needed Iranian missiles for this. We are preparing to respond,” Zelensky said. Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said he is not ruling out a complete blackout in the Ukrainian capital. “We are calculating various scenarios to withstand it and be prepared,” he said. Russian strikes last month destroyed about a third of Ukraine’s power plants, and the government urged Ukrainians to conserve electricity as much as possible. But until now, Ukraine has rarely struck Russian-held civilian energy infrastructure in territory annexed by Moscow, preferring instead to target Russian military supply lines. As Ukraine presses a counter-offensive in the south, Moscow’s occupation forces in Kherson have vowed to turn the city into a “fortress”. Russian forces have for weeks staged a civilian withdrawal from the Kherson region as Ukrainian troops advance, which Kyiv has described as “displacements”. Kherson Governor Vladimir Saldo, who is based in Moscow, said he was moving people further into the region or into Russia because of the risks of a “massive missile attack”. The destruction of the dam will lead to flooding of the left bank of the Dnipro River, he said. Zelensky said last month that Russian forces had laid mines at the Kakhovka hydroelectric station with the intention of blowing it up. Its destruction could cause flash flooding for hundreds of thousands of people, he warned. He said a water cut in the south could also affect cooling systems at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant – Europe’s largest. Meanwhile, a Taiwanese man who volunteered to fight in Ukraine died on the battlefield, Taipei’s foreign ministry said, the first person from the island to be killed in the conflict. And in a final address during his visit to Bahrain, Pope Francis on Sunday urged the faithful to pray “for Ukraine, which is suffering so much” and for an end to the war.
