Ukraine updates: 4 dead as Russia pummels power grid

President Joe Biden spoke with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday, days after the Indian leader visited Kyiv.

Modi posted on X, formerly Twitter, that he reiterated to Biden "India’s full support for early return of peace and stability."

And White House national security spokesman John Kirby told reporters: "We welcome any other country that wants to help President [Volodymyr] Zelenskyy work toward this just peace, and any country that's willing to come at that discussion by starting with President Zelenskyy's perspective, by hearing him out."

Modi angered Ukraine in July by hugging Russian President Vladimir Putin during a visit to Moscow.

The Indian PM visited Kyiv last week and told Zelenskyy that "no problem should be solved on the battlefield."

India maintains a neutral position on Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

British Foreign Secretary David Lammy has joined the US in condemning Russia's barrage of attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure.

The strikes on Monday hit 15 of Ukraine's 24 regions, according to Kyiv, and overwhelmingly targeted the country's energy sector.

"The UK utterly condemns Russia's cowardly missile and drone attacks on civilian infrastructure across Ukraine today," Lammy posted on X.

He also said he was "deeply saddened" by the death of a Reuters employee in a missile strike in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk.

A team of six people from Reuters were staying at the city's Hotel Sapphire when it was hit in an attack on Saturday. Ryan Evans, a safety adviser for the news agency, was killed. One of the agency's journalists, Ivan Lyubysh-Kirdey, remains in a critical condition. 

The United States has voiced anger over a major Russian attack on Ukraine's power grid.

"We condemn in the strongest possible terms Russia's continued war against Ukraine and its efforts to plunge the Ukrainian people into darkness as the fall sets upon us," National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters, calling the assault "outrageous."

Russia fired hundreds of drones and missiles at Ukraine early Monday, many of them targeting the country's energy infrastructure.

Ukrainian officials said the attack, the largest staged by Moscow in weeks, killed at least four people and triggered widespread blackouts.

A hydroelectric power station at Kyiv's main reservoir has been damaged by a Russian airstrike, Ukrainian media reports say.

News agency UNIAN reported the strike after a footage of the damage appeared on Russian Telegram channels.

A fire in the turbine room of the hydroelectric power station and the road on the dam was damaged, the report said. 

After a barrage of overnight airstrikes, the military administration of the Kyiv region had only officially confirmed damage to two unspecified energy infrastructure facilities.

"It is pointless to hide this," wrote the news agency. As reports emerged, Ukrainian authorities tried to allay fears of a possible destruction of the dam.

"There is no threat to the dam of the Kyiv Hydroelectric Power Station. It is impossible to destroy it with missiles," Andriy Kovalenko, head of the Centre for Combating Disinformation, wrote on Telegram.

He said that the situation was not like that of the Kakhovka dam in southern Ukraine in 2023. Kovalenko stressed this had been blown up from the inside, with dozens of people drowning in the flood wave and the water caused severe damage in the downstream area.

The reservoir on the Dnipro River north of the Ukrainian capital is also known as the Kyiv Sea. It has a surface area of about 920 square kilometers (350 square miles) and holds 3.7 billion cubic meters (977.3 billion gallons) of water.

In previous attacks in the spring, the power plant facilities of both the Dnipro and Zaporizhzhya dam stages were damaged.
 

The Polish military said on Monday that the country's airspace was penetrated by an object entering from the direction of Ukraine, as its neighbor was targeted by deadly Russian airstrikes.

"The object was confirmed by at least three radiolocation stations," said General Maciej Klisz, Operational Commander of the Polish Armed Forces.

"It is clear from its characteristics that the object is not a missile, it is not a hypersonic, ballistic or guided missile."

The Polish army said it was conducting searches for what was "probably an unmanned aerial vehicle" – or UAV, commonly known as a drone – around 30 kilometers from the Ukrainian border.

Army command spokesman Jacek Goryszewski said: "There was full readiness to neutralize this object."

This is not the first time that Poland has reported a violation of its airspace since Russia's full-scale invasion of neighboring Ukraine.

In March this year, Warsaw demanded an explanation from Moscow after a Russian cruise missile passed through its airspace for the second time since December.

In November 2022, two people were killed when a Ukrainian air-defense missile fell on the Polish border village of Przewodow.

Poland is a member of both the European Union and NATO, contributing over 4.1% of its GDP to the latter.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has called for "decisive action" from Kyiv's western partners following a large-scale Russian missile and drone strike which targeted energy infrastructure across Ukraine on Monday.

Stating that "weakness and inadequate responses fuel terror," Zelenskyy called on Ukraine's allies to lift restrictions on the use of long-range weapons they have supplied, which currently prevent Ukraine from striking deeper into Russian territory.

"Ukraine cannot be constrained in its long-range capabilities when the terrorists face no such limitations," Zelenskyy said, as the death toll from Monday's attacks rose to five.

"America, Britain, France, and our other partners have the power to help us stop this terror. The time for decisive action is now."

Zelenskyy called not only for permission to use western weapons to strike further into Russia, but also for western powers to intervene more directly to help protect Ukraine from Russian air strikes.

"If such unity has worked so well in the Middle East, it should work in Europe as well," he said, seemingly referring to the assistance provided by the United States, the United Kingdom, France and others when Iran fired a huge salvo of missiles and drones at Israel in April 2024.

"Life has the same value everywhere," said Zelenskyy. "In our various regions of Ukraine, we could do much more to protect lives if the aviation of our European neighbors worked together with our F-16s and together with our air defense."

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday that Russia would respond to Ukraine's ongoing incursion into the Kursk region, which he said had made the idea of ceasefire talks irrelevant.

"Such hostile actions cannot remain without an appropriate response," he told reporters. "There will definitely be a response."

Russian President Vladimir Putin has also promised a "worthy response" but is yet to elaborate.

Peskov also dismissed reports of any potential ceasefire negotiations between Moscow and Kyiv, saying: "The topic of negotiations at the moment has pretty much lost its relevance."

Meanwhile, the incursion into Kursk continued into a fourth week with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy claiming on Sunday evening that Ukrainian forces had advanced a further "1 to 3 kilometers" (roughly 0.6 to 1.9 miles) and occupied "two more settlements," with "active actions underway in one more settlement."

Kremlin spokesman Peskov said Putin was "receiving regular updates from those in the field." 

Ukrainian officials have revised the death toll from a series of Russian missile and drone attacks on Monday morning to four, adding a fatality from the central region of Zhytomyr.

"Russian terrorists have once again targeted energy infrastructure," Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said. "Unfortunately, there is damage in a number of regions."

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia deployed "over 100 missiles" and "about 100 drones" in its nationwide attack. "A lot of damage in the energy sector," he wrote on Telegram.

Ukrainian air defense forces in Kyiv said they shot down around 15 missiles and 15 drones targeting the capital.

"It was very scary, to be honest. You don't know what to expect," 34-year-old lawyer Yulia Voloshyna told the AFP news agency while taking shelter in the Kyiv metro. "We are always worried. We have been under stress for almost three years now."

The Russian Defense Ministry said it had "carried out a mass strike using long-range high-precision weaponry ... on critically important energy infrastructure facilities" and claimed that "all the set targets were hit."

The regional airport in the central Russian region of Saratov restricted flight traffic for around one hour on Monday morning as a result of a Ukrainian drone attack, Russian officials and news agencies reported.

The Russian Defense ministry said its air defense systems had destroyed nine drones over the Saratov region, some 900 kilometers (560 miles) from Ukraine.

A residential complex in Saratov city was reportedly damaged by falling debris, leaving a woman "in a serious condition" in hospital, according to regional governor Roman Busargin. "Doctors are fighting for her life," he said.

The Russian military maintains a strategic bomber base in Engels, a town just over the river from Saratov, which Ukraine has attacked on several occasions since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.

There was no immediate information on the success of this latest attack, but flight traffic at Saratov regional airport was up and running again after approximately one hour.

A foreign national killed in eastern Ukraine on Sunday has been named as Ryan Evans, a former British soldier who had been working for the Reuters news agency in a safety advisory role since 2022.

Evans, 38, was one of a six-person Reuters team staying at the Hotel Sapphire in the city of Kramatorsk when it was struck by what Ukrainian officials say was a Russian Iskander ballistic missile on Sunday morning.

"We send our deepest condolences and thoughts to Ryan’s family and loved ones," said a Reuters spokesperson. "Ryan has helped so many of our journalists cover events around the world; we will miss him terribly."

Kramatorsk is located in north-west of the partially-occupied eastern Ukrainian region of Donetsk, not far from the frontline towns of Chasiv Yar and Pokrovsk.

The city is a hub not only for the Ukrainian Army, but also for journalists, aid organizations and other officials.

A top Ukrainian official has demanded that Kyiv's allies allow Ukraine to use long-range western weapons to strike targets further inside Russia.

"Permission to strike deep into the territory of the Russian Federation is necessary," wrote Andriy Yermak, the chief of staff to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, on Telegram on Monday.

"Such a decision will accelerate the end of the Russian terror."

Yermak's comments came after a Russian drone and missile strike targeted 15 Ukrainian regions on Monday morning, killing at least three people.

Ukraine is in possession of a large inventory of long-range western weaponry, but allies have so far asked that Kyiv does not use them to strike too far inside Russia's borders. Only comparatively recently did NATO countries start approving of striking targets a short distance inside Russia.

At least three people have been killed in a large-scale Russian missile and drone attack which targeted regions across Ukraine on Monday morning.

The Ukrainian Air Force reported groups of Russian drones heading towards eastern, northern, southern and central areas of the country, followed by cruise and ballistic missiles.

Ukraine's Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said 15 regions were targeted in total.

Civilian fatalities were reported in central Dnipropetrovsk, the partially occupied southern Zaporizhzhia region and the northwestern city of Lutsk. An attack on an industrial facility in the eastern region of Poltava wounded five people, the local governor said.

Energy infrastructure was targeted in the western city of Lviv, while air raid sirens and explosions were heard in the capital, Kyiv, which also reported localized power cuts.

Ukraine's largest private energy producer DTEK said it was implementing emergency power outages following the attacks.