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Officials in eastern Ukraine on Sunday blamed Russian attacks on key facilities for widespread power outages that affected large areas of the country where Kyiv’s forces have been making headway in a counteroffensive.
The blackout, which came after Ukrainian forces said they had retaken dozens of towns and villages in eastern Ukraine, hit regions with a pre-war population of millions.
The regional governor of Kharkiv Oblast, where Ukrainian troops have made the biggest gains, said Russian forces had “hit critical infrastructure” in the region and its main city, also called Kharkiv.
“There is no electricity and water supply in several settlements. Emergency services are working to control the fires in the affected sites,” Oleg Sinegubov said in a statement on social networks.
The head of the Dnipropetrovsk region, Dmytro Reznichenko, also said Russian forces were responsible for the blackouts in his region.
“Several cities and communities in the Dnipropetrovsk region are without electricity. The Russians hit the energy infrastructure. They cannot accept defeat on the battlefield,” he said in a statement online.
The head of the eastern Sumy region, meanwhile, said power and water cuts had affected at least 135 towns and villages.
Meanwhile, AFP journalists in the Donetsk regional city of Kramatorsk confirmed that the cuts also affect one of the largest cities in the east, which is still under Ukrainian control.
Its governor also announced cuts in the region, which has been partially controlled by Moscow-backed separatists since 2014.
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