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KYIV, UKRAINE —Russia on Friday mounted its largest airstrike on Ukrainian energy infrastructure of the entire war, hitting a dam and a gas company, killing at least five people, and leaving more than 1 million people without electricity, authorities in Kyiv said.
"Russia is at war against people's ordinary lives. My condolences to the families and loved ones of those killed in this terror," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote in a post on Telegram.
Russia's defense ministry said Friday the assault was revenge for Ukraine's earlier incursions into Russian territory in recent weeks.
"We are in a state of war," Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said in an interview with a pro-Moscow newspaper, published Friday.
Russia managed to strike power grid objects, ammunition depots, railway nodes and other targets, the defense ministry said in a statement.
"Russia launched the largest combined attack on the Ukrainian energy system since the beginning of the full-scale invasion," grid operator UkrEnergo cited their head, Volodymyr Kudrytskyi, as saying. UkrEnergo reported blackouts in seven Ukrainian regions.
Of the 1.2 million people across at least four regions who were left without electricity, about 700,000 people were in the eastern region of Kharkiv, according to data posted on Telegram by presidential aide Oleksiy Kuleba.
The massive attack evoked the first winter of the war, when Russia regularly targeted Ukrainian energy infrastructure.
Ukraine's state-owned oil and gas company Naftogaz was among the sites that were hit Friday. The company said its facilities were damaged in the attack.
"Specialists are already working on restoring the damage, electricity supply has already been restored to some of the [affected] facilities, our gas workers are also working on restoring damaged gas networks," Naftogaz said in a statement.
Ukraine's largest dam, the DniproHES, was also among the sites targeted in Russia's huge overnight attack, an official said. The dam, located in the southern Zaporizhzhia region, was struck eight times, but state hydropower company Ukrhidroenergo said there was no risk of a breach.
In the same region, Russian forces took control of the village of Myrne, Russia's defense ministry said Friday.
Adrienne Watson, U.S. national security council spokesperson, condemned Russia's assault on Ukraine, saying, "It is critical we provide Ukraine additional air defense interceptors to defend against these attacks as soon as possible."
"Lives are on the line and any further delay is inexcusable. House Republicans must pass the national security supplemental now so that we can provide this vital equipment to Ukraine," Watson noted, referencing Republicans' efforts to block a substantial aid package for Ukraine.
VOA's Patsy Widakuswara contributed to this report. Some information in this report came from Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
The Voice of America provides news and information in more than 40 languages to an estimated weekly audience of over 326 million people. Stories with the VOA News byline are the work of multiple VOA journalists and may contain information from wire service reports.