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Map: Institute for the Study of War
UPDATE 1150 GMT:
Russian shelling has killed three family members and injuring four in the village of Burgunka near the city of Berislav in southern Ukraine.
A shell hit the yard of a family home, killing a father, mother, and uncle. A grandmother, another adult man, a 10-year-old girl, and an 8-year-old boy were wounded.
ORIGINAL ENTRY: Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has hailed the country’s resistance against Vladimir Putin’s invasion, after the latest Russian missile and drone strikes failed to knock out power.
The Russians fired 52 cruise missiles within 72 hours, including 16 yesterday. But Zelenskiy said in his nightly address to the nation, “We end this Saturday without power outages in almost the entire territory of our state.”
The only outages were in Odesa in southern Ukraine, with engineers still carrying out repairs after a previous wave of attacks.
Two people were injured on Saturday in Khmelnytskyi in western Ukraine. State atomic agency Energoatom said two missiles flew dangerously close to the South Ukraine Nuclear Power Plant.
But there was no reported damage to critical infrastructure. The President summarized:
It is another confirmation of our resilience, the strength of Ukraine, and the colossal work that was and is being done by many people. By everyone who restores and protects energy. By all who work to strengthen our air defense. By all our partners who help. And, of course, by all our soldiers who defend Ukraine every day, every night as part of the Air Force and all our defense and security forces.
Russia has carried out at least 16 waves of strikes since October 10. At one point half of Ukraine’s electricity grid was off-line; however, the combination of quick repairs, increasingly effective air defenses, and scheduled outages have brought recovery.
Some Russian outlets are now calling for strikes to target electrical infrastructure supporting nuclear power plants, forcing emergency shutdowns of the reactors.
Readovka, with almost 1.7 million subscribers, said the destruction of the infrastructure for the three Ukrainian-controlled plants “will cause damage many times greater than the last few massive missile strikes.”
One of the three nuclear plants is in Khmelnytskyi, one of the areas struck on Saturday, but there is no evidence that the nuclear plant or its supporting infrastructure was targeted.
