Missile attack cut power to Ukraine’s Kharkiv: mayor

A Russian missile attack has “completely” cut off the electricity and heat supply to Ukraine’s second largest city, Kharkiv, its mayor said on Friday.

Ukraine said earlier Russia had launched the largest aerial attack on it in months, targeting energy facilities across the country and killing at least five people.

“The city is completely without power and as a result the water and heating supply are not working,” Kharkiv mayor Igor Terekhov said in a video on his social media.

“Utilities and power engineers need time to cope with the challenges posed by this hostile shelling… I ask everyone to stay calm and remain patient,” he said in a post.

Other areas across Ukraine also reported blackouts, including at least 200,000 in the western Khmelnytsky region and around 260,000 in the southern region of Odesa.

Russia said earlier it had launched a series of “massive” air strikes against Ukraine as retaliation for Ukrainian attacks on its border regions over recent weeks.

It has targeted Ukraine’s energy infrastructure throughout the war, now in its third year, in strikes Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has called “energy terrorism”