Overview
- Kyiv reports nationwide power rationing after one of the war’s largest aerial barrages, with air defenses saying they downed 592 drones and 31 of roughly 50 missiles but not enough to prevent strikes on thermal plants.
- Authorities confirm at least three deaths, including a 7‑year‑old girl, and dozens injured; overnight into Saturday Russia launched 223 more drones, 206 intercepted, while an Iskander strike hit Mykolaiv and a gas facility burned in Poltava.
- Private utility DTEK says multiple thermal power plants were damaged, and the government is resuming gas imports via the trans‑Balkan route following sharp losses in domestic production.
- President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says Russia has massed about 170,000 troops in Donetsk and that Russian units have infiltrated Pokrovsk, describing the situation as difficult but under Ukrainian control.
- Ukraine’s military intelligence claims a strike on the Koltsevoy fuel pipeline near Moscow that it calls a serious blow to Russian logistics, a claim Russian officials downplay and that has not been independently verified.