A night with no advance warning
Russian forces hit Kyiv with a barrage of ballistic missiles and attack drones on the evening of 13 October, striking the Darnytsia combined heat and power plant and a residential building. Six people were killed in the capital and dozens more were wounded, Ukrainian authorities said.
Air raid sirens could not sound in time to warn residents to take cover. Ukraine's Air Force said it received no information from partners about ballistic missile launches from Russian territory, so the threat was not announced in advance. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the country got no warning of the attack.
Power plants struck across the country
Power plants came under ballistic missile attack in the eastern Kharkiv region, while Zhytomyr in the northwest, Sumy in the northeast and Chernihiv in the north were also hit. Two people were killed in the central Dnipropetrovsk region and one more in Zaporizhzhia in the southeast. About 600,000 people lost electricity, according to Ukrainian officials.
The strikes targeted energy infrastructure that Russia has hit repeatedly, leaving cities short of power and heat as winter approaches, when temperatures in parts of the country can fall to minus 20 degrees Celsius.
An energy truce under strain
The renewed attacks followed a proposed truce on energy infrastructure. On 11 October, US President Donald Trump said Russia and Ukraine had agreed to stop attacking each other's energy systems. Zelenskyy said Kyiv was ready to respect the arrangement if Moscow did the same, but Ukrainian officials reported fresh Russian strikes soon afterwards.
Trump later blamed Zelenskyy for stalled peace talks after the attack. Ukrainian officials have complained that Washington is not sharing enough intelligence, and reports of a Starlink service disruption at the same time as the barrage added to friction between the two governments.
Ukraine's air force has said it needs faster data from allies to warn civilians about ballistic missiles, which fly far quicker than cruise missiles and leave only minutes to reach shelter. Officials said rescue teams worked through the night in the capital, clearing debris from the damaged plant and apartment block.