KIEV, Dec 10 (Reuters) – All non-critical infrastructure at Ukraine’s Odessa port was without power after Russia used Iranian-made drones to attack two energy facilities, killing 1.5 million people, officials said on Saturday. People cut off the power.
“The situation in the Odessa region is very difficult,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his evening video address.
“Unfortunately, the hit rate is high, so it will take more than time to restore power … unfortunately, not hours, but days.”
Since October, Moscow has been targeting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure with numerous missile and drone strikes.
Zelensky said Norway would provide $100 million to help restore Ukraine’s energy system.
Odessa regional government spokesman Serhiy Bratchuk said electricity supply to the city’s population would be restored “in the next few days” and it could take two to three months for the network to be fully restored.
Ukrainian security services were investigating an earlier Facebook post by the region’s government advising some to consider evacuating, arguing it was “a factor in Russia’s hybrid war,” Brachuk said.
This post has been deleted.
“There was no call from any representative of the regional authorities to evacuate the population of Odessa and the region,” Bratuk said.
Before February 2, Odessa had more than 1 million inhabitants. 24 Invasion, which Russia calls a “special military operation” to “de-Nazify” its smaller neighbor.
Kiev said Russia had launched hundreds of Iranian-made Shahed-136 drones at targets in Ukraine, calling the attacks a war crime because of their devastating impact on civilian life. Moscow said its attack was militarily legitimate and did not target civilians.
The Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office said two power facilities in the Odessa region were attacked by the Shahed-136 drone.
Ukraine’s armed forces said on Facebook that they had fired 15 drones at targets in the southern regions of Odessa and Nikolayev, of which 10 were shot down.
Tehran has denied supplying Moscow with drones. Kiev and its Western allies say that is a lie.
Britain’s Ministry of Defense said on Saturday it believed Iran’s military support for Russia was likely to increase in the coming months, including the possible delivery of ballistic missiles.
Reporting by Max Hunder and David Ljunggren; Editing by Ros Russell, Daniel Wallis and William Mallard
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.