Russia executes ‘largest attack’ on Ukraine after energy truce

Russia carried out its largest attack on Ukraine’s energy sector since the start of the year during the night of Feb. 3, the energy company DTEK reported. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia took advantage of the U.S. proposal to pause strikes in order to prepare even larger attacks.

“Effectively, the Russian army used the American offer of a short-term pause not to support diplomacy, but simply to stockpile missiles and wait for the coldest days of the year,” Zelenskyy said.

The president added that the attack was deliberately targeted at the energy sector and involved a record number of ballistic strikes. The Kremlin used 32 ballistic missiles, 11 other missiles following ballistic trajectories, 28 cruise missiles, and 450 attack drones.

“Many were intercepted, but not all,” Zelenskyy said.

Energy facilities were hit across several regions, with the heaviest damage in Kharkiv, Dnipro, Kyiv and the Kyiv region, Vinnytsia, Odesa, and Zaporizhzhia.

“Every such strike by Russia confirms that Moscow’s approach has not changed: they still rely on war and the destruction of Ukraine and do not take diplomacy seriously,” the president said.

All targets in this latest Russian attack were civilian, Energy Minister Denys Shmyhal said. “Exclusively civilian: hundreds of thousands of families, including children, were deliberately left without heat in the harshest winter cold, with temperatures outside at −25°C,” he said.

As a result of the strikes, power restrictions have been imposed for industry in all regions of Ukraine, and rolling hourly blackouts have been implemented for all consumers, the national energy company Ukrenergo reported.

On Jan. 29, U.S. President Donald Trump said he had asked Russian President Vladimir Putin not to strike Ukrainian cities for a week during extreme cold.