By Max Hunder and Anastasiia Malenko
KYIV (Reuters) -A Russian bombardment of energy infrastructure left hundreds of thousands of people in Ukraine's Chernihiv region without power and some without water on Tuesday, with repairs slowed down by the lingering threat of drone strikes, officials said.
The energy ministry said that the regional capital, also called Chernihiv, and the northern part of the province had lost all electricity supply.
The attack, which also targeted the neighbouring Sumy region
of northern Ukraine, was the latest in a campaign of Russian strikes targeting the Ukrainian energy grid ahead of winter.
The Chernihiv region, which had a pre-war population of just under a million, has been hammered by Russian drone and missile attacks on its power infrastructure in recent weeks, causing regular blackouts and disrupting daily life.
DRONES IN VICINITY HINDER GRID REPAIRS
"Emergency crews in the Chernihiv region are unable to begin work on restoring power supply due to continuous attacks by Russian drones," the energy ministry said in a statement on Telegram in the morning.
It accused Russia of circling drones above damaged facilities to make it impossible to carry out repairs and "deliberately prolong the humanitarian crisis".
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy wrote on Telegram two hours later that repairs were now underway. "Russia's tactics are to murder people and terrorise them with the cold," he said.
"(Russian President Vladimir) Putin pretends to be ready for diplomacy and peace negotiations, while in reality this night Russia launched a brutal missile and drone attack," Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha wrote on X.
"Many communities have been left without power amid cold autumn temperatures, some have been left without water."
Russia has consistently hit Ukrainian energy facilities since launching a full-scale 2022 invasion of Ukraine, maintaining that they are a legitimate military target in war.
Chernihiv's acting mayor, Oleksandr Lomako, said Moscow was seeking to deprive local residents of power and heat ahead of the cold winter.
'WE WILL OVERCOME NOW,' SAYS CHERNIHIV MAYOR
He evoked the spirit of the early days of Russia's invasion, when Chernihiv was nearly surrounded by Russian forces who were then beaten back. "We overcame in February-April 2022. We will overcome now," he said on Telegram.
A resident of Chernihiv told Reuters via an online messenger that the city was without power and water, and that the mobile signal had been severely affected.
A former government official familiar with the matter, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Moscow was probably targeting Chernihiv because of its proximity to Russia, which made it easier to attack, and because the energy facilities there were poorly protected.
Moscow has sharply increased the frequency of air attacks across Ukraine in recent weeks, as it did in strike campaigns in previous years that pitched cities well away from eastern and southern battlefronts into darkness for hours, sometimes days.
(Reporting by Anastasiia Malenko, Max Hunder, Daria Smetanko and Pavel Polityuk; editing by Mark Heinrich)
