Ukrainian Prime Minister Serhiy Koretskyi said Russia carried out the largest strike on the country's energy grid since the spring, as an overnight barrage killed at least six people nationwide and left parts of Kyiv without electricity under a blanket of smoke.
What officials reported
In a Telegram statement on Wednesday, Koretskyi said attacks of "this scale" against generation and distribution assets had not occurred since the end of the last heating season. President Volodymyr Zelensky said critical infrastructure was hit in the Zhytomyr, Mykolaiv, Kirovohrad and Rivne regions as well as around the capital.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko reported three deaths in the city and six people injured. Regional officials said a child was killed in the Kyiv region, two people died in Sumy and another person was killed in a drone strike in Mykolaiv. Ukraine's air force said Russia launched 188 drones overnight, along with ballistic and cruise missiles, and that Ukrainian defences downed or neutralised the majority of them.
Power repairs under fire
DTEK, Ukraine's largest private power company, said crews had restored electricity to about 8,000 households after the strikes damaged parts of the grid serving Kyiv and surrounding areas. The company warned that repeated hits to substations and lines were adding strain to a system already under pressure from months of targeted attacks.
Residents in Kyiv described waking to acrid smoke and the sound of air-defence fire. The State Emergency Service said multiple fires burned in the capital as rescue teams searched rubble where a utility worker was killed at a warehouse, according to city officials.
Moscow's account and NATO response
Russia's Defence Ministry said its forces struck energy facilities in the Kyiv region that it claimed support military production, a communications centre in the capital and port infrastructure near Izmail. It did not address civilian casualty reports from Ukrainian authorities.
Poland's armed forces said military aviation operated overnight in response to Russian jet-powered drones in western Ukraine. Romania's defence ministry said two Spanish F-18 jets were scrambled after an aerial target was tracked near the border with Ukraine, adding that no incursion into Romanian airspace was detected.
What comes next
With winter approaching, Ukrainian officials have warned that sustained damage to the grid could force longer outages and complicate heating for cities already adapting to rolling blackouts. Koretskyi said eleven regions reported strikes overnight, including hits to residential buildings, social infrastructure and railways, underscoring that the campaign extends well beyond the capital.
Repair teams face the dual challenge of fixing equipment while new waves of missiles and drones remain a nightly risk, leaving policymakers in Kyiv and allied capitals to weigh additional air-defence shipments against the pace of Russian production. NATO officials have not linked the Polish and Romanian scrambles to any breach of alliance territory, but the flights highlight how western Ukraine's skies remain a buffer zone for neighbouring states.