By Maria Varenikova

KYIV— Russia attacked Ukrainian energy infrastructure with missiles and drones on Thursday (28), in what President Vladimir Putin said was retaliation for Kyiv’s hitting Russian territory with long-range US missiles.

Putin suggested that such strikes could be stepped up after millions of Ukrainians were left without power on Thursday, Ukrainian officials said. Ukraine’s energy ministry said it was the 11th major attack on the country’s energy infrastructure this year.

The total extent of the damage was not immediately clear, but explosions were heard in cities across Ukraine, and many officials reported power outages. Six people were reported injured across the country, according to the regional authorities.

“The energy sector is under massive enemy attack again,” Ukraine’s energy minister, Herman Halushchenko, wrote on his Facebook page. The operator of the Ukrainian transmission system “has urgently introduced emergency power outages,” he added.

Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in an escalating cycle of strikes against each other in recent weeks. While attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure have long been a tactic used by Russia, some analysts say both sides are also trying to improve their negotiating position before the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump.

Trump has promised to end the conflict, without specifying how.

Speaking at a meeting of a Moscow-led security alliance in Kazakhstan, Putin warned that Russian strikes on Ukraine could intensify, saying that his country has been selecting targets for missile strikes in Kyiv and that they might include “decision-making centres” in the Ukrainian capital.

“At present, the Ministry of Defence and the General Staff are selecting targets to hit on Ukrainian territory,” Putin said. “These could be military facilities, defence and industrial enterprises, or decision-making centres in Kyiv.”

Putin said that Russia would respond forcefully to strikes on its territory with the use of long-range Western-made missiles, “possibly continuing to test the Oreshnik in combat conditions.”

The Oreshnik is a new intermediate-range ballistic missile that Russia said last week it had launched at Ukraine in response to Kyiv’s recent use of American and British weapons to strike deeper into Russia.

Putin said Russia has several Oreshnik missiles in stock that are “ready to be used.”

After the strikes Thursday, more than 1 million people were without power in the western regions of Lviv, Volyn and Rivne, officials said. Further to the east, the city of Zhytomyr in central Ukraine was without power and water. The southern city of Kherson was also without electricity, as was much of Kyiv.

Ihor Polishchuk, the mayor of Lutsk in the Volyn region of western Ukraine, said there had been several hits on his city and the surrounding area. Six people were reported injured across Ukraine, according to the regional authorities.

Russia has attacked cities in Ukraine with drones almost every night since September in a campaign that analysts say is intended to test and wear down air defences, and it has recently stepped up missile attacks.

The attacks have also targeted Ukraine’s energy infrastructure in an effort to plunge the population into cold and darkness as winter sets in.

Ukraine’s air force reported that 91 missiles and 97 drones were fired at the country overnight. It said that 79 missiles were downed, and all of the drones were either downed or jammed. All told, 188 strikes were aimed at Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, the air force said.

In his comments Thursday, Putin said Russia had launched “a comprehensive strike” overnight on Ukraine using 90 missiles and 100 drones. He said 17 targets, including “military facilities, defence industry facilities and support systems” were hit.

Cruise and ballistic missiles were launched from planes that took off from airfields in three Russian regions and Crimea, the air force said. The Black Sea fleet at Novorossiysk also contributed to the attack with Kaliber cruise missiles.

More than 40% of the country’s generating capacity had already been destroyed and occupied before Thursday’s attacks, according to Stanislav Ignatiev, executive director of Ukraine’s Institute of Sustainable Development, a nongovernmental organization.

The damage and destruction of Ukraine’s power-generating capacity means that the country will face energy problems for a while, analysts said.

“Unfortunately, we have to state that in the near future, we will be limited in generating capacity for at least three to four years until we build new ones,” Oleksandr Kharchenko, director of the Energy Research Centre, an independent institute, said on Monday (25).

The strikes on Thursday came just after Trump appointed a retired general, Keith Kellogg, as his special representative for Ukraine and Russia.

Kellogg is a co-author of a peace proposal submitted to Trump last summer that included a moratorium on NATO membership for Ukraine and that would leave Russia in charge of the Ukrainian territory it currently occupies.

-New York Times