By Max Hunder
KYIV, Nov 29 (Reuters) – A vast Russian overnight attack on Ukraine killed three people and wounded nearly 30, officials said on Saturday, with more than 600,000 households left without power after strikes on the grid as the U.S. attempts to broker peace talks.
“While everyone is discussing points of peace plans, Russia continues to pursue its ‘war plan’ of two points: to kill and destroy,” Ukraine’s foreign minister Andrii Sybiha wrote on Saturday morning as Kyiv residents surveyed the damage after a heavy night of explosions that mostly targeted the capital.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Russia had launched around 36 missiles and nearly 600 drones in the attack.
Moscow has conducted regular large-scale bombardments of Ukraine’s power infrastructure since 2022, but the latest campaign this autumn has pushed Ukrainian cities including Kyiv into a torrid situation, with many households only getting eight hours of power on some of the worst days of blackouts.
The deafening roar of generators and the stench of diesel fumes now fill the capital’s avenues, and people use torches at night as streetlights are often out.
Ukraine’s energy ministry said the overnight attack had hit power facilities in Kyiv and five other Ukrainian regions. More than 500,000 of the households which lost power were in the capital.
Ukraine has been negotiating with the United States on the terms of a peace agreement that Washington is seeking to broker between Kyiv and Moscow to end Russia’s nearly four-year-long war.
Kyiv and its European allies say they want peace but pushed back against some of the original terms pushed by the U.S., with Ukraine unwilling to withdraw from land it currently holds and resisting any restriction on its future ability to join alliances.
(Reporting by Max Hunder; Editing by William Mallard, Kirsten Donovan)
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