A night of drones and missiles
Russia launched 332 drones and missiles at Ukraine overnight, according to the Ukrainian air force, which said air defences intercepted or neutralised 293 of them. Ukrainian officials said at least eight people were killed and about 60 injured as strikes hit two shopping centres and several apartment blocks.
One shopping centre hit was in Sumy, close to the front line. Rescue teams worked through the morning at a damaged apartment building in Zaporizhzhia, where local authorities said at least five people, including a child, were injured.
Power cut to more than a million people
The strikes targeted energy infrastructure in ten regions overnight and into Friday morning, leaving more than a million people without electricity. In central Vinnytsia Oblast, governor Natalia Zabolotna said the attack was one of the largest on the region since the full-scale invasion began, with drones and missiles hitting civilian and critical infrastructure and injuring six people.
In Odesa Oblast, governor Oleh Kiper said civilian infrastructure was hit and at least four people were injured. Kherson also came under attack, according to regional officials. Energy crews began emergency repairs, but operators warned that scheduled outages would widen as winter approaches.
A widening gap with Washington
The strikes landed in a week when relations between Kyiv and Washington deteriorated sharply. President Donald Trump has blamed Ukraine for high diesel prices in the United States and, in an interview, said President Volodymyr Zelenskyy should step aside. Zelenskyy has said he will not.
Trump also announced a deal to buy Russian diesel and, on Friday night, waived parts of a sanctions law passed last month that would have penalised buyers of Russian oil. Zelenskyy called the diesel arrangement a gift to Vladimir Putin and "an investment in a war that must be ended". European allies raised similar objections.
Ukrainian officials say the timing matters. With the grid damaged and temperatures falling, each strike on a substation has a longer effect than it would in summer. Repair crews can restore lines, but they cannot easily replace transformers that take months to build.