Russian attacks on energy facilities left hundreds of thousands of people in Ukraine without electricity, President Volodymyr Zelensky said, as a humanitarian ceasefire in the Kherson region approached its scheduled end Sunday night. BBC World reported on Nov. 1 that the local truce had held while fighting continued elsewhere.
Zelensky said the overnight strikes hit energy infrastructure in four regions. Ukraine’s State Emergency Service reported that another attack in the Vinnytsia region killed two people, including a 13-year-old girl.
Repair crews worked through Sunday to reconnect customers. Dnipropetrovsk’s governor said most affected customers in the region had power restored by early evening, though more than 60,000 remained disconnected. The BBC reported that recurring attacks had prompted emergency outages nationwide, with Kyiv also facing prolonged blackouts and disrupted water supplies.
Zelensky appealed for faster deliveries of Patriot missiles, saying Russia was exploiting Ukraine’s shortage of ballistic-missile interceptors. He also said a Ukrainian attack on a major missile-fuel producer in Russia’s Rostov region started a fire and damaged four production facilities.
The Kherson ceasefire began Tuesday with help from US First Lady Melania Trump and Pope Leo XIV, according to the BBC. Initially limited to Oleshky, it was subsequently extended across the wider region.
Residents leaving Oleshky faced a circuitous journey through Russian-held territory, southern Russia and Belarus before entering northern Ukraine. The city’s routes out had been mined and exposed to drone attacks, while residents endured shortages of essentials. Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman, Dmytro Lubinets, said evacuees ranged in age from one to 94.