Many Ukrainians are facing the prospect of a winter of power outages after about 30% of the country’s power stations were knocked out in just over a week. The deputy head of the president’s office, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, has warned that the country needs to be prepared for “a hard winter”.
It has been reported that a great deal of this damage is being inflicted by Shahed-136 “kamikaze” drones, acquired by Russia from Iran in recent weeks. On Monday October 17 alone, Russia launched 43 Shahed drones at Kyiv, killing four civilians as the focus of Russia’s attacks turned again to Ukraine’s cities.
Ukraine’s power and water infrastructure has been the most common target in recent days. Iran’s drones have a proven track record in this respect, having reportedly been used by Houthi rebels to strike at oil facilities in Saudi Arabia in 2019.
