Ukraine and Russia exchange strikes in escalating attacks on energy sites

Russian drones and missiles pounded Ukraine’s power grid overnight into Saturday, a Ukrainian energy firm said, a day after what officials described as the biggest attack on Ukrainian natural gas facilities since Moscow’s all-out war more than three and a half years ago.

The strike damaged energy facilities near Chernihiv, a northern city close to the Russian border, and sparked blackouts set to affect some 50,000 households, according to regional operator Chernihivoblenergo.

The head of Chernihiv’s military administration, Dmytro Bryzhynskyi, confirmed a nighttime Russian attack on the city caused multiple fires, but did not immediately say what was hit.

In a separate Russian drone strike hit a passenger train at a station in Ukraine's northern Sumy region, injuring dozens of people, officials said on Saturday.

"A brutal Russian drone strike on the railway station in Shostka, Sumy region," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote on Telegram, posting a video of a wrecked, burning passenger carriage and others with their windows blown out.

Russia’s Defence Ministry, on the other hand, said on Saturday that its air defence systems had intercepted and destroyed 117 Ukrainian drones over several regions and the Black Sea.

“Over the course of the past night, air defence alert systems intercepted and destroyed 117 Ukrainian fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles,” the ministry said, listing strikes across the Bryansk, Volgograd, Kursk, Rostov, Voronezh, Belgorod, Leningrad, Kaluga, Novgorod, and Smolensk regions, as well as occupied Crimea and the Black Sea.