Russia targeted Ukrainian energy facilities and struck civilian infrastructure in overnight attacks, Ukrainian officials said on Thursday, and a U.N. monitoring body said Moscow's strikes on the power grid probably violated humanitarian law.
Ukraine's air force said it had shot down all 42 drones and one of four missiles launched by Russia in the latest attacks in more than 2-1/2 years of war since Russia's full-scale invasion.
Three people were killed and one wounded in shelling near Krasnopillia in the Sumy region on Wednesday evening, local prosecutors said. The region suffered a temporary power cut overnight after energy infrastructure was attacked, the national grid operator said.
Russian forces have pummelled the energy system in the Sumy region in multiple strikes this week, reducing power in some areas and forcing authorities to use back-up power systems.
The U.N. Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine criticised Russia over its repeated strikes on the energy grid, which it said posed risks to the water supply, sewage and sanitation, provision of heating and hot water, public health, education and the wider economy.
"There are reasonable grounds to believe that multiple aspects of the military campaign to damage or destroy Ukraine’s civilian electricity and heat-producing and transmission infrastructure have violated foundational principles of international humanitarian law," it said in a report.
Kyiv says the targeting of its energy system is a war crime, and the International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for four Russian officials and military officers for the bombing of civilian power infrastructure.
Moscow says power infrastructure is a legitimate military target and has dismissed the charges against its officials as irrelevant.
REPEATED ATTACKS
Moscow has repeatedly attacked Ukraine's energy grid since Ukraine began an incursion into Russia's western Kursk region last month in which Kyiv says it seized over 100 settlements.
Russia has taken back two more villages in Kursk, a senior commander said on Thursday, adding that Russian forces were also advancing in eastern Ukraine.
Ukrainian air defences went into operation in nine Ukrainian regions overnight, the air force said.
The governor of the central Dnipropetrovsk region said one missile was shot down over his region, and that no one was hurt there. The governor of the northeastern region of Kharkiv said six people were wounded in the region following a morning attack, in the town of Kupiansk.
Civilian infrastructure, a school, a kindergarten and 10 apartment buildings were damaged in the city of Kharkiv, he said. An educational institution was also damaged in the Cherkasy region, the regional governor said.
Russia has denied targeting civilians although towns and cities across Ukraine have suffered heavy damage and thousands of Ukrainian civilians have been killed.
