A new energy infrastructure in Russia’s sights. Ukraine’s national operator Ukrenergo said on Monday that Russia had destroyed a key power station in Kherson before withdrawing its troops from the city and the right bank of the Dnieper last week.
“The power station that supplied electricity to the entire right bank of the Kherson region and a significant part of the Mykolaiv region is practically destroyed,” Ukrenergo President Volodymyr Kudrytsky wrote on Facebook, adding that it was one of the ” consequences of impotent fear”. of the occupants before their escape”.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he saw “the beginning of the end of the war” after he recaptured Kherson, a major city in southern Ukraine, where he paid a three-day surprise visit on Monday after the entry of Ukrainian forces.
Forced withdrawal under Ukrainian pressure
The Kremlin for its part continued to claim that Kherson, officially annexed in September along with the region of the same name, belonged to Russia even though its troops had to abandon it.
“We will not comment, they know very well that this is the territory of the Russian Federation,” Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
Russian forces were forced to withdraw last week from Kherson after eight months of occupation, leaving the way open for Ukrainian soldiers to enter the city on Friday.
Kherson had been the first major city and the only regional center to fall after the Russian invasion launched in late February. The forced withdrawal of troops from Moscow under pressure from the Ukrainian counter-offensive was a slight to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who had ordered the mobilization of 300,000 reservists in September.
Specific energy infrastructures
However, “the next few months will be difficult” for Ukraine, warned NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.
“We must not make the mistake of underestimating Russia,” he declared in The Hague, saying that “Putin’s goal is to leave Ukraine cold and dark this winter.”
The Russian military has carried out several waves of massive kamikaze missile and drone attacks against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure in recent weeks.
In his daily speech, Volodymyr Zelensky on Sunday night accused Russian forces of having committed “atrocities” in Kherson as in the other previously liberated regions. He claimed that 400 Russian “war crimes” had been documented so far, without specifying whether they related only to the Kherson region.
On Monday, the Ukrainian intelligence service announced that it had arrested a Russian soldier in Kherson “disguised as a civilian”, while there are fears that soldiers from Moscow are still present in the city.
Source: BFM TV
