Russia has stepped up strikes on the high-voltage lines that move power between Ukraine's regions, First Deputy Energy Minister Artem Nekrasov said on 9 October. The grid "has temporarily lost some of its capacity to transmit electricity to consumers"1. On 8 October a Russian strike on an energy facility in Sumy region killed one energy worker and injured three. On the morning of 9 October homes in Kyiv and in seven regions, from Kharkiv to Odesa, had no power, and emergency cuts replaced published schedules in parts of the capital.
Nekrasov's ministry named the transmission lines, rather than power plants alone, as the target. Those lines let operators send power from one region to cover a shortfall in another, and that capacity is what the grid has lost. The ministry has asked Ukrainians not to share material that could help the enemy, and it reports "without unnecessary detail". Lines in the south were already exposed: the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant lost its last off-site power line on 20 August.
On 10 October a Russian guided aerial bomb, an unpowered bomb with wings released far from the target, collapsed a section of a three-storey apartment block in Zaporizhzhia city. The State Emergency Service of Ukraine said 23 people were killed, four of them children, and 32 injured, three of them children2. Rescuers had cleared about 320 tonnes of debris and ended the search on the morning of 11 October.
