Ukraine war latest: Russian missile strikes force emergency power shutdowns

Ukraine is switching to exigency shutdowns to stabilise its powerfulness grid aft Monday's Russian rocket attacks, President Volodymyr Zelensky has said.

He said galore regions were affected, and a section authoritative warned that astir fractional of Kyiv would stay without energy successful the coming days.

Overnight, much missiles deed captious infrastructure adjacent the confederate metropolis of Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine said.

It is not known if determination were immoderate casualties.

Four radical were killed successful Monday's attacks.

Ukraine is present seeing snowfall and sub-zero temperatures successful galore regions, and millions are without energy and moving water. There are fears that a fig of radical whitethorn dice of hypothermia.

In his video code precocious connected Monday, President Zelensky said 70 Russian missiles were fired connected Monday, and "most of them were changeable down".

The Russian defence ministry said it deed each 17 of its intended targets during its "massive onslaught utilizing high-precision weapons".

He said "the biggest fig of shutdowns is successful Vinnytsia, Kyiv, Zhytomyr, Dnipropetrovsk, Odesa, Khmelnytskyi and Cherkasy regions", referring to the regions spanning the magnitude and breadth of the country.

But helium pledged that the authorities "will bash everything to reconstruct stability".

Mr Zelensky said energy supplies were besides affected successful neighbouring Moldova, proving that Russia's actions were "a menace not lone to Ukraine, but besides to our full region".

Monday's strikes was Russia's eighth monolithic rocket onslaught successful 8 weeks.

Warnings that Russia was readying a caller question of hits person been circulating for respective days. They yet arrived conscionable hours aft a bid of explosions astatine 2 subject airfields heavy wrong Russia, which Moscow blamed connected Ukrainian drones intercepted by Russian air-defences.

Three servicemen were killed and 2 craft were lightly damaged astatine the airfields successful the Ryazan and Saratov region, the Russian defence ministry said.

Ukraine has not publically commented connected the issue.

The 2 airfields - hundreds of kilometres from Ukraine's borderline - location Russian strategical bombers that person been utilized to transportation retired rocket attacks since Moscow's full-scale penetration of Ukraine began connected 24 February.

Before the latest Russian strikes, officials successful Kyiv were talking astir moving from highly disruptive exigency blackouts, which often past for galore hours, to much manageable scheduled powerfulness cuts which connection civilians immoderate severely needed predictability.

Moscow has been battering Ukraine's powerfulness grid since 10 October, pursuing a drawstring of dense subject defeats connected the battlefield.

Some Western leaders person called the strategy a warfare crime, due to the fact that of the immense magnitude of harm caused to civilian infrastructure.

Experts person told the BBC that Russia's maneuver of hitting vigor infrastructure is astir apt designed to demoralise and terrorise the population, alternatively than summation immoderate factual subject advantage.

Moscow has repeatedly denied the allegations.