Rescuers work at a damaged building after a Russian missile attack in Kyiv region, Ukraine, Wednesday, May 8, 2024. (Ukrainian Emergency Service via AP)
Ukrainian officials on Wednesday said they were preparing to order electricity rationing measures across the country after a major overnight missile strike by Russia — the latest in a relentless bombing campaign against civilian infrastructure.
Brownouts “are possible throughout Ukraine” between 6 p.m. and 11 p.m., the state energy provider, Ukrenergo, said in a statement posted on the Telegram social media platform. The statement cited a “shortage of electricity in the power system.”
The Russian strikes, which lasted more than three hours overnight, targeted energy infrastructure in six Ukrainian regions. Ukraine’s power plants, electrical grid and other infrastructure have become particularly vulnerable as Western countries have struggled to supply Kyiv with sufficient air defense systems and ammunition.
“Restrictions will be evenly distributed across all regions,” Ukrenergo wrote. “Exactly how the shutdown schedules will operate in each region will be published on the official pages of local regional energy companies.”
In the early hours of Wednesday, Ukrainian air defenses shot down 39 missiles and 20 drones. Sixteen missiles, including two ballistic missiles, and one drone pierced the shield, the Ukrainian air force said on Telegram.
Missiles damaged three thermal power stations belonging to the country’s largest power supplier, DTEK, the company said in social media posts. DTEK did not specify where the stations were located.
“Another extremely difficult night for the Ukrainian energy industry,” DTEK said in its statement, adding that this was “the fifth massive shelling of the company’s energy facilities in the last one and a half months.”
DTEK, which provides about 20% of Ukrainian electricity, said that 80% of its available generating capacity has been damaged or destroyed.
Russian missiles and drones also targeted the Kyiv region, damaging houses and injuring two people, the head of the Kyiv military administration, Ruslan Kravchenko, wrote on Facebook.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy noted that the attacks took place on the anniversary of the surrender of Nazi Germany in 1945, a holiday observed as “Remembrance and Victory over Nazism in World War II Day.”
Zelenskyy, posting on Telegram, drew a parallel between Russia’s actions and those of Nazi Germany. “The entire world must understand who is who,” he said. “The world must not give a chance to new Nazism.”
Russia’s missile strikes against Ukrainian civilian infrastructure added to “the long list of its war crimes,” Josep Borrell, the European Union’s high representative for foreign affairs, wrote on X.
“Ukraine urgently needs adequate air defence systems,” Borrell wrote, which he said would be a priority at an upcoming meeting of European Union defense ministers.
The E.U. on Wednesday reached a tentative deal to seize profits from frozen Russian central bank assets and use them to fund weapons and other aid for Ukraine. The deal would mean about $3 billion a year in additional support for Ukraine, with 90% of that going to arms and other military equipment. The funds could reach Ukraine as early as July, officials said.
“There could be no stronger symbol and no greater use for that money than to make Ukraine and all of Europe a safer place to live,” Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, wrote on X.
In 2022, Ukraine’s allies seized more than $300 billion in Russian central bank assets, including more than $200 billion held in the E.U. Some member states have pushed to use all of those assets to help Kyiv, while others — including Germany and France — have questioned the wisdom and legality of such a move. Some hope that Wednesday’s agreement, which must still be formally approved, could add momentum to efforts to use more of the funds to support Ukraine. But many countries remain firmly opposed.
As energy officials prepared for the power rationing, Ukrainian law enforcement authorities announced that they had launched a murder investigation into a prominent oligarch and a onetime ally of Zelenskyy, on suspicion of organizing a contract killing in 2003.
The oligarch was not identified by name, but as a “well-known businessman.” However, in posts describing the case on Telegram, Ukraine’s general prosecutor office and national police posted photos of the businessman, in which Ihor Kolomoisky could be identified, though his face was partially obscured. Ukrainian media also named Kolomoisky, an oil, banking and media mogul, as the person in question.
According to the prosecutor’s office, Kolomoisky hired contract killers to carry out “personal revenge” against a director of a law firm who refused to cooperate with him to “annul and invalidate the decisions of a general meeting of shareholders of an open joint-stock company.”
“To realize his criminal intentions, the suspect involved members of a gang that ‘specialized’ in committing serious and especially serious crimes, including physical violence against competitors,” the prosecutor’s office said.
Ukraine’s national police said that in August 2003, “four men brutally beat and stabbed a lawyer” in the center of Feodosia, in Crimea — a region of Ukraine that Russia illegally annexed in 2014.
The man survived the attack, and law enforcement officers arrested the suspects in the attempted contract killing. “Now the police have established indisputable evidence confirming the identity of the customer,” the national police said.
Kolomoisky is in pretrial detention as authorities investigate him on a number of charges, including fraud, money laundering and embezzlement. Last month, a Kyiv court prolonged his detention, setting a bail of close to $50 million. Kolomoisky refuses to pay the sum, protesting that the case against him is illegal.
Kolomoisky, whose wealth was once valued at $2 billion, was considered to be a major influence on Zelenskyy — then an actor and comedian who starred on a Kolomoisky-owned television channel. In 2019, he helped Zelensky get elected by providing him extensive airtime on his network.
Kolomoisky has been under legal pressure since 2016, when officials discovered some $5.5 billion missing from the balance sheet of PrivatBank — Ukraine’s largest retail bank — then owned by Kolomoisky and his business partner, Hennadiy Boholiubov. Officials accused Kolomoisky, Boholiubov and other top deputies of embezzling.
The charge of hiring killers to carry out a contract hit is a significant escalation in Ukrainian officials’ battle against the country’s oligarchs — and further evidence of the deep rift that developed between Zelenskyy and Kolomoisky after Zelenskyy’s election.
The fact that the case against him dates back more than 20 years is also unusual for Ukraine’s legal system, which has seen a number of high-profile murders go unpunished.
Emily Rauhala in Brussels contributed to this report.
