Moscow has in recent months escalated its attacks on energy infrastructure in Ukraine, damaging natural gas facilities which produce the main fuel for heating in the country.
Experts have said Ukraine risks heating outages ahead of the winter months.
“The enemy is massively attacking Ukraine’s energy infrastructure again. Because of this, emergency power outages have been introduced in a number of regions of Ukraine,” energy minister Svitlana Grynchuk wrote on social media, without specifying where.
“Emergency power outages will be cancelled after the situation in the energy system stabilises,” she said. “Despite the enemy’s plans, Ukraine will have light and heat this winter.”
Air raid alerts were triggered across Ukraine overnight, with authorities in northeastern Kharkiv and southern Odesa reporting drone strikes on energy facilities.
A drone strike on the eastern city of Dnipro ripped through a nine-storey building, killing one woman and wounding six, including a child, according to emergency services.
In the capital Kyiv, civil and military authorities said falling debris had caused fires in two locations in the central Petchersky district.
‘Technological disaster’
Russia has targeted Ukraine’s power and heating grid throughout its almost four-year invasion, destroying a large part of the key civilian infrastructure.
Drones also hit energy infrastructure in Ukraine’s southern Odesa late Friday evening, the region’s governor Oleg Kiper said on Telegram.
“There was damage to an energy infrastructure facility,” he said, reporting no dead or wounded.
The attacks on energy infrastructure have raised concerns of heating outages in Ukraine as the war enters its fourth winter.
Kyiv’s School of Economics estimated in a report that the attacks shut down half of Ukraine’s natural gas production.
Ukraine’s top energy expert, Oleksandr Kharchenko, told a media briefing Wednesday that if Kyiv’s two power and heating plants went offline for more than three days when temperatures fall below minus 10°C, the capital would face a “technological disaster”.
Ukraine has in turn stepped up strikes on Russian oil depots and refineries in recent months, seeking to cut off Moscow’s vital energy exports and trigger fuel shortages across the country.
On Friday evening, drone attacks on energy infrastructure in southern Russia’s Volgograd region caused power cuts there too, governor Andrei Botcharov said on Telegram.