Power has been restored to nearly 6 million Ukrainians after a slew of Russian missile strikes against the country’s various infrastructure, including its electricity generating systems. “Repair work continues without a break after yesterday’s terrorist attack,” the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said in a video address on Saturday.
Russia has claimed its mass strikes against Ukraine on Friday were part of its prevention of foreign weapons’ delivery to Ukraine. On Friday, “military command systems, the military-industrial complex and their supporting energy facilities of Ukraine were hit with a mass strike with high-precision weapons”, Russia’s defence ministry said in its daily briefing.
The mayor of Kyiv says three-quarters of households in Kyiv have had their heat restored. In a Telegram post on Saturday, Vitali Klitschko wrote: “75% of the capital’s residents already have heat supply. Heating engineers continue working for the second day in order to stabilise the situation with heat supply in Kyiv.” The work came as the capital’s basic services were being restored.
Rescuers have recovered the body of a one-and-a-half-year-old boy from the rubble of Friday’s Russian strike on a three-storey residential building in the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih in Dnipro region, the region’s governor, Valentyn Reznichenko, said. In total, four people were killed in the attack on Kryvyi Rih, he said. Thirteen others, including four children, were injured.
Russian president Vladimir Putin has sought proposals from his military commanders on how they think Russia’s campaign in Ukraine should proceed, during a visit to the operation’s headquarters, the Kremlin said.
Russia has denounced a decision by Moldova to temporarily ban six television channels as “political censorship”. Moldova accused the channels of airing “incorrect information” about the country and Russia’s military operation in Ukraine.
Moldova has reached a short-term energy deal that will help wean it off its dependence on Russian natural gas, a senior official said on Saturday. The Moldovan deputy prime minister, Andrei Spînu, said the state gas firm Moldovagaz would buy 100m cubic metres of gas from domestic supplier Energocom this month.
Russia’s campaign of strikes against Ukrainian critical infrastructure has largely consisted of air- and maritime-launched cruise missiles but has almost certainly also included Iranian-provided drones, according to the UK’s Ministry of Defence. In its latest intelligence update it also said Russia was probably concerned about the “vulnerability” of Crimea.
A Ukrainian military commander has said Russia may try to invade from the north, potentially around the anniversary of when Vladimir Putin first ordered his troops to invade Ukraine. Maj Gen Andrii Kovalchuk told Sky News the fiercest fighting might be ahead and appeared particularly focused on the possibility of Russian troops invading via Belarus, on Ukraine’s northern border, in order to target the capital.
A Ukrainian presidential adviser has said it is “unrealistic” to expect Kyiv to come to an agreement with Russia to end the war. “War must end only with its defeat,” Mykhailo Podolyak wrote on Twitter, saying Ukraine would act with “required proportions of artillery, armoured vehicles, drones and long-range missiles”.
A 36-year-old man was killed inside his car after Russian forces shelled the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson on Saturday morning, the regional governor, Yaroslav Yanushevych, said. A 70-year-old woman was also injured after Russian troops struck a western district of the city with artillery and multiple rocket launchers, Yanushevych wrote on Telegram.