The Ukrainian crisis

Water and electricity supplies have been disrupted in the capital Kyiv and second largest city, Kharkiv. Again, the targets were civilian infrastructure and two people were reported to have died when a rocket hit an apartment building in Kryvyi Rih in central Ukraine.

Tens of thousands of Kharkiv residents had to spend several hours in underground metro stations. Kyiv’s local authorities say the city has come under one of the most massive rocket attacks since the war began nearly 10 months ago.

Kyiv’s city council says Ukrainian anti-aircraft batteries shot down 37 of “about” 40 incoming rockets and one person was injured. Local authorities in major cities such as Kryvyi Rih and Zaporizhzhya have reported on social media of explosions and rocket attacks. The flight alert was triggered across the country in the morning hours.

Seeking refuge in the subway

In the capital Kiev, Mayor Vitaly Klitschko said on Friday morning that all subway lines had been canceled due to a power outage and because the stations were to be used as shelters. The Metro was not expected to operate normally until Saturday at the earliest.

Rockets hit the Desnjan, Dniprov and Holosiiv neighborhoods in the Ukrainian capital, and Klitschko is calling on all residents to stay in shelters.

– The attack on the capital continues, he writes in Telegram.

Due to the damage to the energy grid, the water supply in all parts of the capital has also been damaged, says the mayor.

Military leaders on the ground insisted to the AP that a local defense group had managed to shoot down a rocket with a machine gun.

– It’s almost impossible to hit a rocket with a gun, but it was done, says a commander nicknamed Hera. Another officer says he saw sparks from shells that hit the rocket and it began to spin off course.

Power failure

In other parts of the country, according to the authorities, the Russian rockets also hit critical infrastructure and power plants.

This applies, among others, to the large city of Kharkiv in the north-east, where three rocket launches cut off water and electricity supplies. The whole city is without electricity, Mayor Ihor Terekhov said on Friday afternoon.

On social media, there are also reports of power outages in Poltava and Cherkasy in the center of the country, as well as in Kherson in the south.

Rail traffic is also affected. The destruction resulted in power outages at numerous railway stations, including Kharkiv, Kirovohrad, Donetsk and Dnipropetrovsk counties. But more trains keep running since they can be connected to steam locomotives when the power goes out.

Supply authorities say hospitals, water treatment, heating and wastewater plants will again have priority during the reconstruction. It is warned that it will take longer for each wave of rockets to hit targets in Ukraine. Friday’s wave was the ninth in a row since this strategy was initiated by the Russian side in October.