Russia Hits Ukrainian Power and Gas Facilities in Widespread Attack

Russia unleashed a furious bombardment aimed at critical Ukrainian infrastructure overnight on Thursday and on Friday amid increasing worries that the American decision to withhold intelligence assistance could leave Ukraine more vulnerable to attacks.

Ukraine’s energy minister, German Galushchenko, said Russian forces launched a “massive missile and drone” assault on power and gas facilities across the country.

The Ukrainian Air Force reported that Russia sent 261 attack vehicles — 67 missiles of various types and 194 drones, some which were outfitted with dummy warheads to confuse and overwhelm air defense crews.

Ukraine shot down or disabled most of the attack drones, the air force said, but only destroyed 35 of the 67 missiles. Ten more missiles did not reach their targets, the air force said, without elaborating.

French Mirage-2000 fighter jets that arrived in Ukraine one month ago joined F-16’s in the skies for the first time, the air force said, helping in the defense.

The bombardment came just days after the United States said it was suspending intelligence sharing with Kyiv, which Ukrainian officials and analysts have said could compromise Ukraine’s ability to detect and defend against Russian bombardments.

American intelligence gathered from a sophisticated satellite network contributes to Ukraine’s early warning system, giving millions of civilians precious minutes to seek shelter and providing air defense teams with vital information they need to try and intercept inbound missiles and drones.

Russia will try and exploit Ukraine’s vulnerability by intensifying drone and missile strikes, warned the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank.

The percentage of missiles Ukraine has been able to destroy in large-scale bombardments has fluctuated throughout the war, often in relation to the pace of deliveries of air defense systems from its Western allies.

Ukrainian officials did not comment on the impact the suspension of intelligence sharing played in defending against the latest bombardment.

Russia has been engaged in a relentless campaign to shatter Ukraine’s infrastructure for more than three years, a tactic aimed at degrading services like water and electricity and demoralizing the Ukrainian public.

Heaving already ravaged the country’s power plants, Moscow has stepped up attacks on oil and gas facilities. Ukraine’s largest national oil and gas company, Naftogaz Group, said the overnight attack was the 17th aimed at its facilities during the course of the war,

“We are doing and will continue to do everything possible to ensure the country has gas,” Roman Chumak, the head of the company, said in a statement. “The process of dealing with the aftermath of the attack and assessing the damage is ongoing.”

The Russian attacks are also aimed at crippling the nation’s industrial capacity, undermining Kyiv’s efforts to scale up its own domestic arms production.

With the U.S. withholding military support, Ukraine’s domestic production takes on added significance. Despite being under constant pressure, Ukrainian arms makers now supply about 40 percent of all the equipment used by soldiers on the front, according to the Ukrainian government.

The Ukrainian government does not comment on successful strikes on military targets.

Major General Vadym Skibitskyi, the deputy chief of Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, told Ukrainian media that “one of the priorities” of the Russians will be targeting “our defense industry enterprises, where weapons are manufactured, where we have increased production of many types of weapons, ammunition, unmanned aerial vehicles and systems.”

The Trump administration has been applying increasing pressure on Kyiv at the same time as it aligns itself with the Kremlin.

Ukrainians and many western analysts have warned that the Trump policy would not lead to peace but only embolden the Kremlin, which says it will stop its invasion only on its own terms. Ukrainians and their allies in Europe believe those terms amount to total Ukrainian capitulation.

“These Trump administration policies are undermining the leverage that the United States needs to get Russian President Vladimir Putin to accept any peace agreement that is in the interests of the United States, Ukraine, and Europe,” the I.S.W. said, echoing a common critique among Ukraine’s European allies.

Senior U.S. and Ukrainian officials are planning to meet next week in Saudi Arabia to discuss a possible path to bring the war to an end.

In the latest Russian bombardment,

the port city of Odessa in southern Ukraine was hit for the fourth night in a row, DTEK, a prominent Ukrainian power company, said in a statement.

In Kharkiv, which is about 25 miles from the Russian border in eastern Ukraine, Mayor Ihor Terekhov said rescue workers were racing to put out flames after an apartment was damaged in strikes that appeared aimed at critical infrastructure.

“Rescuers pulled a woman from the rubble — she is alive and currently being examined by doctors,” he said. “Search and rescue operations are ongoing.”

At least eight people were injured, he said.

Nataliia Novosolova contributed reporting.