More than a million without power in Ukraine regions after intense Russian strikes

By Kosta Gak, Tim Lister, CNN

Kyiv, Ukraine (CNN) — Several regions of Ukraine have endured a night of Russian drone and missile attacks targeting energy infrastructure that left more than a million households without power, according to the interior ministry.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia had used more than 450 drones and 30 missiles and that more than a dozen civilian facilities around the country had been damaged overnight Friday into Saturday.

“It is important that everyone now sees what Russia is doing – every step they take in terror against our people, all their attacks, for this is clearly not about ending the war,” Zelensky added.

The strikes also injured several civilians and left many areas without water supplies, regional authorities said.

Interior minister Ihor Klymenko said the strikes had delivered “painful blows to Ukraine’s energy sector,” with the Odesa and Mykolaiv regions particularly impacted.

The attacks come as US President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff prepares to meet Zelensky and European officials in Berlin for talks on advancing the US plan for a peace settlement in the nearly four-year-old war.

Russia has focused on crippling Ukraine’s energy infrastructure as winter sets in and has been able to strike more targets in recent months by firing a mix of several hundred drones and missiles simultaneously.

In Odesa, “the targets were port and energy facilities. The enemy struck the Odesa seaport, causing a fire in the grain storage facilities,” said Oleksiy Kuleba, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister and minister of community and territorial development.

Ukraine’s largest power company DTEK said 20 electrical substations had been damaged in the Odesa region. Video supplied by DTEK showed personnel beginning to clear debris at the site of one of the power substations that had been hit.

Kuleba added that in the southern city of Kherson, the regional capital was without electricity, affecting more than 140,000 customers. Water supplies there have been reduced to four hours a day while repair work continues, according to local officials.

In neighboring Mykolaiv, the city’s mayor Oleksandr Senkevych said the strikes had been “one of the most massive attacks on Mykolaiv and the region in recent times,” adding that five people had been injured.

In the north, Chernihiv was struck more than 30 times overnight, according to Vyacheslav Chaus, head of the regional military administration.

For its part, the Russian defense ministry said more than 40 Ukrainian drones had been intercepted overnight. Several apartments were struck in the southern city of Saratov, according to the regional governor Roman Busargin, killing two people.

On Friday, three Turkish-owned ships were damaged in Russian attacks on ports in the Odesa region, according to Ukraine’s navy spokesperson.

Discussions to continue in Germany

Germany is set to host Witkoff, the US envoy, as well as European and Ukrainian delegations, in the coming days for further negotiations on a US-backed plan for ending the war.

After talks among European, US and Ukrainian officials in Paris on Friday, France said Europeans, Americans and Ukraine needed to agree on common ground in peace negotiations with Russia.

“It will be up to the Americans to use their power and their skill to convince the Russians that this option of consolidating this common ground between the Ukrainians and the Americans is indeed the one on which peace is built,” the French presidency said.

The Americans “insist on the issue of territories, while the Ukrainians and Europeans insist on the issue of security guarantees, and that is what must be balanced,” the presidency said.

“The Ukrainians have not made a deal on the territories, are not considering a deal on the territories today, are not considering a DMZ,” or demilitarized zone, it added. What happened on territory was bound up with security guarantees, the presidency said in a briefing.

On Friday, Russia said it had not seen the new peace proposals that resulted from the talks between Europe, the US and Ukraine, adding that it may not like them, according to Russian state media.

“What the Americans are currently coordinating with the Europeans and the Ukrainians should ultimately be shown to us. This will naturally provoke a corresponding reaction; I don’t think we’ll be entirely happy with it either,” Kremlin aide Yury Ushakov said.

Ukraine claims rare battlefield gain

On the frontlines, a rare Ukrainian counterattack has inflicted heavy losses on Russian troops in the Kharkiv region, according to the Ukrainian military and analysts.

At the same time, Ukrainian forces continue to resist the Russian offensive aimed at taking the key hub of Pokrovsk in Donetsk region, the military’s commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said Saturday.

The Russians were conducting “offensive operations along virtually the entire line of contact,” he said. “On some days, the number of combat engagements reaches 300 — the highest since the start of the war.”

In Kharkiv, the Ukrainians say they have driven Russian units out of the town of Kupiansk. The Khartiya corps reported that since September, more than 1,000 Russians had been killed and nearly 300 wounded as Ukrainian units counterattacked.

More than 200 Russian soldiers were currently surrounded, the Khartiya corps added.

Geolocated video published on Friday showed Ukrainian forces operating throughout the town.

Last month, the Russian defense ministry claimed that Kupiansk had been captured and the remnants of Ukrainian forces surrounded.

Commenting on the Kupiansk operation, analysts of the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said that Russian President Vladimir Putin “and senior Russian military officials have been attempting to portray the frontline in Ukraine as imminently on the verge of collapse.” But the Ukrainian counter-attack and “resistance along the rest of the line shows that this narrative is false.”

Syrskyi said the situation in Pokrovsk and the adjacent town of Myrnohrad remained difficult with the Russians transferring additional units to the area.

“Over the past few weeks, we have been able to regain control of about 16 square kilometers in the northern part of the city,” Syrskyi asserted.

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CNN’s Max Saltman, Gul Tuysuz, Darya Tarasova and Pierre Bairin contributed reporting.