Missiles threaten Kyiv power supply, Russian troops return to Belarus
Lviv/Moscow, Oct 15 (EFE).- A Russian missile attack on a power supply facility in Kyiv on Saturday morning has put supplies in the capital and its surrounding region at risk, which could lead to emergency outages, Ukraine’s national energy company said.
Two rockets struck the plant on Saturday morning without causing any casualties, the Ukrainian agency Ukrinform said.
“Today, the enemy carried out another barbaric attack on critical infrastructure. As a result, an energy infrastructure facility in the Kyiv region suffered severe destruction,” Ukrenergo reported, according to Ukrinform.
The source added that the company’s specialists were working to “restore the reliability of the power supply in Kyiv and the central region.”
Ukrenergo has urged the population to consume electricity sparingly, especially from 5pm to 11pm, not to use energy-consuming appliances, to postpone running laundry machines until nighttime and to turn off unnecessary lights.
“Such measures give our specialists the opportunity to stabilize the situation as quickly as possible and complete the necessary restoration work,” the company said.
Meanwhile in neighboring Belarus, the first group of Russian military personnel who will join forces with Belarusian troops amid rising tensions with neighboring Ukraine has arrived, the country’s defense ministry said Saturday.
It is the first significant deployment of Russian troops to Belarus since the Kremlin launched its invasion of Ukraine in February.
“The first trains with Russian servicemen who will make up the Regional Military Grouping arrived in the Republic of Belarus,” the Belarusian command said on its Telegram channel.
“The regional military grouping (…) is a strictly defensive project,” Victor Tumar, representative of the General Staff of the Belarusian Army, stressed, due to Nato boosting its presence in Poland and the Baltic countries.
Last week, Lukashenko announced that he had agreed with Russian president Vladimir Putin to create the military grouping “in view of the aggravation of the situation on the western borders”.
Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg responded by urging Minsk to stop supporting Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine. EFE
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