As regular Russian strikes on energy facilities leave parts of Kyiv without running water, fears are mounting that further power outages could spark a serious humanitarian and public health crisis in Kyiv.
In the Oct. 19 attack on Kyiv, at least one person was killed, and eight others were injured as Russian missiles struck Kyiv in multiple waves overnight.
Russia attacked Kyiv with ballistic missiles in two waves overnight on 18–19 October. Information from partners did not arrive before the first wave, at around 23:00, Air Force spokesperson Yurii Ihnat said on national television. A warning came before the second wave, at around 03:00, but the window was short, he told NV.
Hours earlier, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told NBC that US warnings of Russian ballistic launches were working again after three days without them, and that only the United States has that intelligence. Those warnings have for years given Ukrainian authorities several minutes to sound alarms and let civilians reach shelters before ballistic missiles hit.
“Once again, a Russian ballistic attack in several waves overnight, and once again there was no warning from partners,” Zelenskyy wrote. It was at least the third ballistic strike on Kyiv in a week to begin without warning from partners, following attacks on 12 October and 13 October.
Metro station damaged on Kyiv’s left bank
One person was killed and eight injured in Kyiv, Ukrainian Prime Minister Serhii Koretskyi said. A strike damaged a metro station on Kyiv’s left bank, and debris broke the rails beside it, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said. City authorities said the damaged station was above ground, closed Chernihivska and Lisova stations, and said red-line trains would run only between Akademmistechko and Darnytsia. The attack also damaged a 25-story building, a medical facility, and the Cosmo Multimall shopping center in the Solomianskyi district, NV reported, and Zelenskyy said a school was hit too.
The attack also damaged one of Ukraine’s main ice arenas, on Shalett Street in Kyiv, which hosts Ukrainian championship hockey games and youth training, hockey Telegram channel Flamingo reported. Parts of the facade, metal structures, and roof were damaged, but the ice surface showed no significant visible damage, according to preliminary information, Suspilne reported.
Damage in 11 oblasts, three missing in Irpin
Koretskyi said energy and infrastructure were the main targets, with damage in 11 oblasts. Russia also hit warehouses of medicines, railway stations, shops, and homes, he said. In Kyiv Oblast, Russian strikes injured six people in Irpin, including three children, and three more were missing, oblast head Tymur Tkachenko said. In Kharkiv Oblast, six people were injured, including two children, Koretskyi said. In Rivne Oblast, four people were injured, and one of them was hospitalized, regional police reported.
Zelenskyy said that more than 10 energy facilities were damaged and at least 550,000 families lost power. Ukrenergo reported new outages in 10 oblasts: Volyn, Zhytomyr, Rivne, Ternopil, Khmelnytskyi, Vinnytsia, Kirovohrad, Kharkiv, Odesa, and Mykolaiv. In Volyn Oblast, about 15 jet-powered Shahed-type drones targeted the region, and around 66,000 customers were without power on the morning of 19 October, oblast head Roman Romaniuk said. Kovel, Manevychi, and Lutsk were hit hardest, and no casualties were reported. In Vinnytsia Oblast, a critical infrastructure facility in Koziatyn was damaged, and power there would stay unstable for some time, city council secretary Iryna Repalo said, Suspilne reported.
Zelenskyy said Russia fired 16 ballistic missiles at Kyiv and Kyiv Oblast. The Air Force reported that Russia also used Iskander-K cruise missiles and 269 drones, and that by 09:00 air defenses had shot down or suppressed four Iskander-K cruise missiles and 243 drones. Its preliminary count did not list any ballistic missiles among the intercepted targets.
Rubio denies any pause and points to a software problem in Ukraine’s warning system
On 19 October, Rubio told reporters in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, that “there’s been no pause” in intelligence-sharing with Ukraine, Reuters reported. He said he did not know where Zelenskyy was getting such claims and that he should focus on ending the war. He also said he did not know whether a failure had happened the previous night, but that a few nights earlier there had been a software problem with “their early warning system,” and that US European Command was looking into the strikes, The Guardian reported. US officials had not mentioned a software glitch before, and in at least one case Ukraine was told that bad weather over southern Russia had hidden launch preparations, the newspaper noted.
Ihnat said Ukrainian specialists and their partners were working to establish why information about the first launch had not arrived. He added that similar gaps had occurred during earlier attacks.
Zelenskyy wrote that when missile supplies for Ukraine’s air defense are blocked while Russia gets sanctions relief or delays, “this is, unfortunately, a denial of reality on the part of partners.” A night earlier, Russia had hit Ukraine’s energy system again, while Ukrainian drones set fire to St. Petersburg’s oil terminal despite Washington’s pressure to stop refinery strikes.
Ukrainian president accuses Washington of ‘denial of reality’ in continuing row with Trump over apparent support for Moscow
Ukraine did not receive a warning from the US about an impending Russian missile attack on Sunday evening, Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said, reviving concerns that Washington is withholding intelligence to bully Kyiv into capitulating to Moscow.
Yuri Ihnat, a spokesperson for the Ukrainian air force, said on television on Monday morning that Ukraine had not received a warning before a Russian missile barrage hit power plants in Kyiv at about 11pm. Earlier, a Ukrainian government official had told the Guardian the US had not warned the capital about the impending missile strike.
Ukrainian president accuses Washington of ‘denial of reality’ in continuing row with Trump over apparent support for Moscow
Ukraine did not receive a warning from the US about an impending Russian missile attack on Sunday evening, Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said, reviving concerns that Washington is withholding intelligence to bully Kyiv into capitulating to Moscow.
Yuri Ihnat, a spokesperson for the Ukrainian air force, said on television on Monday morning that Ukraine had not received a warning before a Russian missile barrage hit power plants in Kyiv at about 11pm. Earlier, a Ukrainian government official had told the Guardian the US had not warned the capital about the impending missile strike.
Several explosions rocked the capital just before 11 p.m., with further attacks around 3 a.m. and 7 a.m., Kyiv Independent journalists on the ground reported. Ukraine's State Emergency Service (DSNS) said damage was reported in at least three districts.
The US has resumed sharing intelligence on Russian ballistic missile launches with Ukraine after a pause of several days, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told NBC News on 18 October. The blackout fell on days when Russia was firing ballistic missiles at Ukraine. Limits on the Starlink satellite service that Ukraine’s forces rely on remain in place, he said.
Russia has leaned on ballistic missiles in this month’s strikes on Ukraine’s grid, firing 39 in a single attack, and Ukraine is short of interceptors to stop them. Washington has used its support as leverage, reportedly telling Kyiv to spare Russian refineries or lose US intelligence and arms.
Three days without warnings
The sharing had been blocked for some period of time before it was restored, Zelenskyy said on Meet the Press.
“We are very thankful for this. Now it works,” he said.
Ukraine gets other intelligence from Europeans and dozens of other partners, he explained. But only the United States has the data that tells Kyiv when Russia launches ballistic missiles.
“We didn’t get it during ballistic attacks during three days,” Zelenskyy said.
A timely warning gives Ukraine’s air defenses extra minutes to prepare and lets authorities alert civilians, Liga noted. Late on 12 October, Russian ballistic missiles hit Kyiv before the air-raid alert reached people, with no advance data on launches from Russian territory. The next day, US President Donald Trump said Washington was still sharing intelligence. Two days later, Zelenskyy said Kyiv had received no US warnings of incoming ballistic missiles while it paused its strikes on Russian refineries at Washington’s request. That pause followed the energy ceasefire Trump declared on 11 October, which Russia never confirmed.
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Starlink still capped, Kyiv says
Starshield, the military version of Starlink, still cuts out above 161 km/h, Zelenskyy said, too slow for Ukraine’s interceptor drones to catch Russia’s jet-powered Shahed-type drones. NBC News, which aired the interview, separately reported that Starlink services had resumed at normal speed. He said Ukraine’s generals and government believe the order came from the US government and SpaceX carried it out, though he did not know who exactly made the call. Ukraine had instead asked SpaceX and Trump to open Starlink over Russia so it could hit ballistic missile launchers, he said.
“If [Trump] will personally decide to lift this decision, it will immediately work as it was before,” he said.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who appeared on the same show, called Zelenskyy’s charge “very reckless” and said Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio had denied any administration role. Asked about the break in intelligence sharing, he said he did not know anything about it but that Zelenskyy should be “very careful about making statements like this that aren’t true.” Reuters had reported, citing three officials, that White House officials ordered the Pentagon to limit the service.
Asked whether Ukraine could win without the United States, Zelenskyy said it would be very difficult.
“But if the United States will support Putin, I mean, it’s unbelievable, it’s tragedy. It’s historic mistake and big tragedy,” he said.
He also said his team had received word that US negotiators wanted to meet, and that he had offered to meet in Brussels or London, hoping the US team would be ready this week.
The warnings are back, but they stopped once without explanation. Ukraine’s defense against Russia’s missiles still runs through decisions made in the US.
During their visit to Kyiv in September, US President Donald Trump’s envoys urged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to consider restarting the pipelines that once carried Russian gas to Europe, The New York Times reported on 17 October. They presented it as part of a peace deal with Russia. In the weeks that followed, they pressed the idea with European officials, while Washington freed Russian diesel and spared Russia’s oil buyers from new US penalties.
Energy sales fund Russia’s war, and Ukraine’s halt of transit in January 2025 left TurkStream as Gazprom’s only pipeline route into the EU. Meanwhile, Russia has kept bombing Ukraine’s grid through the energy truce Washington declared on 11 October.
The pitch in Kyiv
Envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner put the idea to Zelenskyy when they met him in Kyiv, the newspaper reported, citing people familiar with the talks. Trump officials argued that transit fees, which Ukraine gave up at about $1 billion a year, would benefit Kyiv, and that European voters would eventually want cheaper energy. Russia’s share of EU gas imports had fallen from 45% in 2021 to 13% last year.
The envoys presented renewed Russian gas sales as one of the economic incentives in a wider settlement covering Russia’s relationship with NATO, security guarantees for Ukraine, and territorial control. Some European and Ukrainian officials suspected Washington would seek a cut of the profits. The White House denied that the Nord Stream pipeline had been a subject of recent discussions. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov claimed that resuming energy cooperation is in Russia’s interest and, right now, even more in Europe’s.
US President Donald Trump’s envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner in Kyiv, 6 September 2026. Photo: President's Office of Ukraine
Germany pushes back
At Ukraine talks the envoys hosted in Florida last week, Günter Sautter, security adviser to German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, forcefully opposed the idea. German lawmakers have called a return to Russian deliveries a disaster for European security, even treason, as the far-right AfD courts Gazprom to bring the gas back. Former Economy Minister Robert Habeck, who steered Germany off Russian gas after 2022, said Trump “seems to have more sympathies with Vladimir Putin than he has with the Ukrainians.”
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One concession after another
Rather than pressure Putin or strengthen Ukraine, the administration has spent much of its peace effort on economic incentives for Russia, the newspaper wrote. The US Treasury cleared imports of Russian diesel on 9 October. On 16 October, Trump waived the penalties on Russia’s oil buyers that Congress had passed in the Graham Act. Washington is also weighing relief for sanctioned shadow fleet tankers. And the White House ordered limits on the military satellite service Ukraine’s forces rely on, Reuters reported.
Putin’s economic envoy Kirill Dmitriev claimed the ice had broken and more joint initiatives would follow, including data centers powered by Russian nuclear energy. The talks also cover the sale of Lukoil’s foreign assets to a group that includes the US government, the newspaper reported earlier this month. Zelenskyy, who had heard the pitch in Kyiv, alluded to it in a Financial Times interview this week.
“The question will be when will the next deal be? Maybe it will be gas. Definitely it will be gas,” he said.
Reopening the pipelines could hand Moscow back significant revenue and strengthen its sway over Europe’s energy market, Liga noted. Each new concession lowers the price Russia pays for continuing the war.
Local residents gathered on Oct. 17 in front of the city council to demand that Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko step down from the post he has occupied for over 12 years.
"Kyiv without Klitschko," hundreds of protesters chanted as they took to the streets in central Kyiv, according
Damage to energy facilities in the Kyiv region has also reduced water pressure in areas of the capital on the Dnipro River's right bank. Emergency specialists are switching power supplies to water pumping stations, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said.
Russia has found a way to cut Ukraine’s power lines that no repair crew can undo. A unique power transmission tower that a Russian drone cut down at the Dnipro River crossing in Kyiv cannot be restored, Ukrenergo board chairman Vitaliy Zaichenko says, as the grid operator rushes to build alternative ways to keep electricity flowing, Interfax reports.
Russia has spent the war trying to switch off Ukraine’s lights. Now, it is widening the campaign before winter with a new tactic: drones that slice through the steel towers carrying high-voltage lines.
“Everyone has seen the video showing the destruction of one of the unique power transmission towers at the crossing over the Dnipro in Kyiv. It was severed, and it is impossible to restore it,” Zaichenko continues.
He adds that now the company is developing new technical solutions "on the fly, and very fast." It will start the procedures for those solutions from 15 October, he notes. Russia’s use of drones able to sever metal towers is a new and serious challenge for Ukraine’s power engineers.
Zaichenko did not say when the tower was hit. On 30 September, Russia first used a jet-powered drone carrying a 40-kilogram charge built to cut steel towers, and that evening an eyewitness filmed one striking a power line tower in Kyiv, which cut electricity in parts of three districts, Informator reported.
When the spare parts are as scarce as the targets are plentiful
Rebuilding is colliding with a global shortage. Ukrenergo faces serious difficulties getting backup equipment, Zaichenko explains, because the whole world’s energy system is expanding at once and everyone needs the same hardware.
“There is a real problem with equipment. The global power system is expanding, and everyone needs energy equipment. There is a tough queue,” Zaichenko says.
Ukraine has faced such challenges since August 2026, when Russia began launching its jet-powered drones. Kyiv still has no effective solution against them and relies more on a mix of air defenses, such as automated turrets and interceptor drones.
Kyiv has also engaged over 100 private air defense system brigades to protect its enterprises in the ranks of the Ukrainian Air Forces.
Russia hit central Ukraine’s Kirovohrad Oblast with its largest attack since the full-scale invasion, killing residents of the oblast capital, Kropyvnytskyi, the oblast’s head said. Russian strikes hit more than a dozen oblasts, and Ukraine’s president said Moscow escalated deliberately after sanctions relief.
Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine continues on the front line and behind it, where its drones, missiles, and glide bombs strike towns daily. Kyiv is drafting winter crisis plans as Russia targets the biggest cities, and logistics is hit too: Russia struck one retailer’s warehouse hub 10 times in a day.
Three dead in Kropyvnytskyi
Oblast head Andrii Raikovych counted almost 360 Russian drones over Kirovohrad Oblast and hits on 26 locations, mostly in Kropyvnytskyi. In his words, “the enemy deliberately struck critical infrastructure, transport enterprises, logistics facilities, and residential buildings.” In a post after midnight, he reported a third death and six injured, five of them in hospital.
Air-raid alerts around the city ran from 15:20 on 14 October to 05:33, and Suspilne correspondents heard more than 20 explosions in Kropyvnytskyi, the public broadcaster reported. The national emergency service counted 25 struck locations, and rescuers were still putting out fires in the morning, the service’s spokesperson in the oblast said.
People and a damaged car in the yard of an apartment block in Kropyvnytskyi after the Russian drone attack of 14–15 October 2026. Photo: Andrii Raikovych/Telegram
A wave Kyiv ties to sanctions relief
Nationwide, Russia launched 580 drones and two Kh-59 guided missiles from 18:00 on 14 October, and air defenses downed or suppressed 536 drones by 08:00, the Air Force reported. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia killed three people in Kropyvnytskyi and three in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, where oblast head Oleksandr Hanzha reported two dead.
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Zelenskyy counted more than 850 Iranian-designed Shahed attack drones between the start of 14 October and 09:00 the next day, “precisely at the time of an artificial speed limitation for our defensive capabilities.” Overnight into 14 October, SpaceX capped speeds on its military Starshield satellite service, disrupting Ukrainian missions. He added that Russia escalated “deliberately, having received a relaxation of sanctions and seeing attempts to pressure Ukraine.” Last week, Washington cleared Russian diesel trade after a call between US President Donald Trump and Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin.
Strikes from Kyiv to Odesa Oblast
In Kyiv, a drone fell into a residential yard, Mayor Vitali Klitschko wrote, later putting the injured at six. Drones hit two industrial enterprises in Poltava Oblast, its head Vitalii Diakivnych wrote, and a later strike on Poltava injured three people, rescuers said in a preliminary count. Ukraine’s state gas company Naftogaz said a drone set one of its gas production facilities in the oblast on fire, halting its work.
Russian guided aerial bombs injured two women and a man in Izium, Kharkiv Oblast, on 15 October, according to preliminary data from oblast head Oleh Syniehubov, who had counted nine injured in the oblast over the previous day. Over that day, Russian attacks killed three people in Donetsk Oblast, the oblast police said, and one in Kherson Oblast, where oblast head Oleksandr Prokudin reported five more injured. In Kherson city, a drone injured a man, the oblast administration said. In Sumy Oblast, a drone hit a house and left two people in acute stress, its administration said.
A house destroyed by Russian guided aerial bombs in Izium, Kharkiv Oblast, 15 October 2026. Photo: Kharkiv Oblast Military Administration/Telegram
In Odesa Oblast, strikes damaged two apartment blocks, a company, and a bank office without casualties, oblast head Oleh Kiper said. Later, a jet-powered Shahed hit a store in the oblast, Zelenskyy wrote, and Kiper counted four injured in a preliminary tally. Drones also hit an enterprise in Ternopil Oblast, and five people sought medical help, rescuers said, while drones damaged two homes in Rivne, oblast head Oleksandr Koval said.
A porcelain fish survived the Russian strike that destroyed a room in the Kyiv apartment of Andrii Dubenko, a volunteer, dentist, and medic, his cousin Anna Danylenko wrote on Facebook and told UP Life, the lifestyle site of Ukrainska Pravda. Dubenko and two others were inside the nine-story building in Lisovyi masyv when the 13 October strike hit. It killed other residents.
The strike came during a ballistic attack aimed mainly at CHP-4, one of Kyiv’s main power plants, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said, two days after Washington announced an energy ceasefire that Moscow never confirmed.
Lifted out in a rescue basket
Dubenko, his girlfriend, and a 72-year-old aunt were inside when the blast hit, Anna told UP Life. Her family was lucky, she wrote, and the rule of two walls saved their lives. The rule tells anyone who can’t reach a shelter to keep at least two walls between themselves and the street, away from windows. Fifteen minutes after the blast, State Emergency Service rescuers lifted the three out in a basket, Anna wrote. The aunt comforted the girlfriend, telling her not to live in the past but to look to the future, Anna said.
The porcelain fish that survived Russia’s 13 October 2026 strike on an apartment building in Kyiv’s Lisovyi masyv. Photo: Anna Danylenko/Facebook
A hole where the window was
“Just on Monday I was sitting in their cozy apartment, where I grew up, and now I’m looking into a hole that just two days ago was a window,” Anna wrote.
She gathered what was left of the tea set the family used for samovar tea while her grandmother was alive. “It was my anchor, the anchor of our family,” she wrote. The porcelain fish survived. Her mother used to play with it, and Anna now calls it the “fish of unbreakability.” UP Life likened it to the ceramic rooster that survived in a wrecked kitchen in Borodianka, Kyiv Oblast, in 2022 and became a symbol of Ukrainian resilience.
The family didn’t sleep that night. Firefighters were still putting out the blaze overnight, so they could only get back inside in the morning.
“Charred ruins, lots of water in the hallway, which burned out. People are throwing broken things out the window, down by the building. The smell of burning is everywhere,” she told UP Life.
Volleys of explosions deafened Kyiv in the early hours of Oct. 14, as Russia targeted multiple energy facilities powering the embattled capital amid a new campaign to isolate and disconnect the city following a brutal summer of relentless strikes on businesses and
Throttling of mobile internet system will affect Kyiv’s air defences more than its strikes on oil refineries. Now Zelenskyy must be hoping that US intel holds
In Ukraine the situation was already jittery enough. Donald Trump has been inventing ceasefires and buying Russian diesel to shore up his flagging popularity, while a sinister new wave of faster, jet-powered drones are breaking through Kyiv’s stretched air defences. Casualties are rising as the weather turns.
Overnight, Russia bombed three power plants that supply Kyiv, aiming to cut off heating and electricity to the city. According to the president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, for a second night in a row no warning came from Ukraine’s western allies of the incoming ballistic missiles – and so no air raid alert was issued.
One of Ukraine’s most prominent drone volunteers, Serhii Sternenko, says that Starlink terminals have been restricted overnight, with connectivity beginning to drop out at speeds exceeding 160 km/h. As a result, several critical missions were disrupted.
Sternenko heads a charitable foundation that has purchased 291,502 FPV drones, which have helped the Ukrainian military shoot down more than 12,954 aerial targets. He has also served as an adviser within the team of former Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov.
Sternenko suggests that SpaceX may have introduced the restrictions at the request of the Trump administration. He adds that Ukraine had refrained from striking Russian oil refineries and energy infrastructure in recent days, as Trump had requested.
“But Trump was looking for any opportunity to undermine our defense capabilities, and he did so despite the fact that we had complied with his demands,”Sternenko says.
The limit landed the same night Russian ballistic missiles struck Kyiv’s Desnianskyi district, killing three women and injuring 24, including a seven-year-old girl.
Rescuers evacuated people covered in blood
The strike on a nine-story residential building set it ablaze, burning out apartments from the first floor to the ninth, with rescuers pulling bloodied residents from the flames and leaving survivors without power, water, or gas, according to Suspilne.
During the night’s first ballistic launches, partners did not alert Ukraine, but for the three later waves the warnings did come through, Air Force communications chief Yurii Ihnat says. The cause of the first lapse is still being established, per Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
The early warnings help Ukrainian civilians quickly find a place to hide from such strikes, leaving up to 3 minutes to do so. Without it, people are left entirely helpless in the face of the aggression.
Further Starlink restrictions have reportedly been introduced
Later, Sternenko wrote that reports were "coming in from military personnel that restrictions on the use of Starlink satellite communications terminals for our operations have just been tightened.
"The speed at which the connection starts dropping out is now 60–70 km/h,” he added.
Residents standing outside their burning block of flats described the overnight Russian missile attack that killed at least two people and left several others injured. Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine received no early warning from its allies before the strikes
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