Missiles, exploding drones again hit Ukraine’s power, water

KIEV

Air strikes cut power and water supplies in a repeatedly bombed Ukrainian city and pounded energy and infrastructure facilities elsewhere in the country on Oct. 18, part of an apparent quickening effort by Russia to drive Ukrainians into the cold and dark as winter bites.

All of Zhytomyr, a city with military bases 140 kilometers (85 miles) west of the capital, was without electricity and water after a double missile strike on an energy facility, said Mayor Serhiy Sukhomlyn. Hospitals were left running on backup power, he said.

Missile strikes also hit an energy facility in Kyiv and severely damaged another in the south-central city of Dnipro, authorities said.

The governor of the partly Russian-occupied southern Zaporizhzhia region also reported a fire at an infrastructure facility caused by suicide drones _ so called because they slam into targets and explode.

Waves of explosives-laden suicide drones had also struck Kyiv on Monday, hitting energy facilities and setting ablaze and partly collapsing buildings. One drone slammed into a four-story residential building, killing four people.

In a televised address on Monday night, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia is using kamikaze drones because it is losing the war, now nearing its eighth full month.

“Russia doesn’t have any chance on the battlefield, and it tries to compensate for its military defeats with terror,” he said. “Why this terror? To put pressure on us, on Europe, on the entire world.”