Ukraine multiplying energy attacks despite moratorium: Russia

MOSCOW: Russia’s defence ministry said on Saturday Ukraine had increased its attacks on Russian energy infrastructure, hitting targets 14 times in the last 24 hours, despite a U.S.-brokered moratorium, a charge Ukraine’s military called “fake” and “disinformation”.

In a statement published on Telegram, the ministry said Ukraine “multiplied the number of unilateral attacks using drones and artillery shells on the energy infrastructure of Russian regions”.

It said the strikes had caused damage in Russia’s Bryansk, Belgorod, Smolensk, Lipetsk and Voronezh regions, as well as the Ukrainian regions of Luhansk and Kherson, parts of which Russia controls. Reuters was unable to verify the reports of the strikes. In its own statement on Telegram, Ukraine’s military said that the reports were fake, and that its forces were only striking military targets.

Ukraine’s military has previously said it halted strikes on Russian energy facilities on March 18.

Russia and Ukraine agreed last month to a U.S. proposal for a 30-day moratorium on striking each other’s energy infrastructure. Both sides have since repeatedly accused each other of violating the deal.

The deal was part of a wider diplomatic push by U.S. President Donald Trump since his return to office in January to end the conflict.

Separately on Saturday, authorities in two Russian regions reported Ukrainian drone strikes on local industrial facilities.

The governor of Russia’s Volga river region of Mordovia said Ukrainian drones had struck an industrial facility. Media reports said it was an optical fibre factory in the region’s capital, Saransk.

The governor of Samara region, another Volga riverside province, said that a factory in the city of Chapaevsk had been attacked by Ukrainian drones.

A source in Ukraine’s SBU security service told Reuters that the target was a plant producing industrial explosives, and that the strike had caused multiple explosions and fires.

On Friday, a Russian strike on the Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih killed at least 19 people, including nine children, local officials said.

Russia’s Defence Ministry said it targeted a military gathering in the city, a statement the Ukrainian military denounced as disinformation.