Ukraine’s eastern region has suffered a “total blackout” a day after a counterattack by Kyiv’s troops which forced the Russian army to retreat from large tracts of the Kharkiv region, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accusing Russia of deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure, reports Aljazeera.
Ukrainian officials claimed water facilities and a thermal power station in Kharkiv, which Ukraine’s second-biggest city, were deliberately attacked, causing power outages and cuts in water supplies.
“No military facilities, the goal is to deprive people of light & heat,” Zelenskyy claimed on Twitter late on Sunday, accusing the Russians as “terrorists”.
As many as nine million people in the region, including in territory controlled by Russia, could be affected.
“There is no electricity or water supply in several settlements. Emergency services are working to control fires at the sites that were hit,” Oleg Synegubov, the governor of the Kharkiv region, claimed in a statement on social media.
Bd-pratidin English/Tanvir Raihan
