Western Ukraine and Zaporizhia hit by Russian missile attacks at dawn

Russian cruise missiles and drones were attacked overnight throughout western Ukraine. Explosions were heard in Lutsk and Vinnytsia, according to the Telegram channel Suspilne News. The regions of Lviv, Zaporizhia and Ivano-Frankivsk were also hit.

At around 3 a.m. local time, the Ukrainian Air Force issues a series of alerts while tracking the routes of drones and missiles in Ukrainian airspace.

During the night missile attack, Russian troops hit an energy facility in the Lviv region, Ukrinform reports.

Maksym Kozytskyi, the governor of the Lviv region, reported on his Telegram channel:

“The enemy launched a missile attack on a critical energy infrastructure facility in the Lviv region. A fire broke out. Firefighters are already working on the scene,” the message said.

“Equipment at Ukrenergo’s plants in Zaporizhia and Lviv regions was damaged,” the Energy Ministry said, adding that two employees in Zaporizhia were injured and hospitalized, according to AFP.

Social media reports indicate that a fire broke out in the early hours of the morning in Stryi, a town 70 kilometers south of Lviv that is home to several energy facilities.

Residential buildings and kindergartens in the city of Ivano-Frankivsk were also damaged in the rocket attack, Ukrinform reported.

The mayor of Ivano-Frankivsk, Ruslan Martsinkiv, reported on his Telegram channel:

“Unfortunately, there is damage to residential buildings and a kindergarten: the windows there were broken.”

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Poland announced at 4:50 a.m. local time that it had alerted military jets to protect Polish airspace during the Russian attack in western Ukraine.

Russia’s attacks are part of a concerted campaign to destroy Ukraine’s energy production capacity.

On Thursday, June 20, Russian forces launched massive missile and drone strikes across Ukraine, targeting power plants in four regions. According to the Ukrainian Air Force, the attack damaged infrastructure in the Vinnytsia, Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk and Kyiv regions.

A senior Ukrainian energy official recently warned that planned blackouts and emergency power outages would become more frequent in the coming weeks after a series of Russian attacks crippled Ukrainian electricity production.

“In the next few weeks the situation will be much more difficult than today,” said the head of the national grid operator Ukrenergo, Volodymyr Kydrytsky, in an interview on June 16.

The periods during which Ukrainians may be without electricity are likely to extend by up to 12 hours a day and the outages could be “more severe,” Kydrytsky said in the interview broadcast on state media.

“This situation will last until the end of July,” he added

Oleksandr Kharchenko, chairman of the Energy Research Center, noted that the capacity of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure is currently critically low, indicating that in the worst conditions in winter there could be power outages lasting up to 20 hours without light or heating.