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KYIV: An overnight Russian attack left parts of Ukraine’s southern Odesa region without power early Saturday, the latest strike to target Ukraine’s energy system ahead of winter, authorities said.
Authorities did not say how many people the latest power cut affected, but Ukrainian energy firm DTEK reported outages in parts of the region’s capital. DTEK later said it had restored power to over 240,000 households in the region.
“Last night, the enemy attacked energy and civilian infrastructure in the Odesa region,” regional governor Oleg Kiper said on Telegram.
“Power engineers are making every effort to fully restore power supply,” he added.
Moscow has targeted Ukraine’s energy grid each winter since it invaded in 2022, cutting power and heating to millions of households and disrupting water supply in what Kyiv says is a brazen war crime.
Russia denies targeting civilians and says Ukraine uses the energy sites to power its military sector. Kyiv says the strikes are primarily aimed against civilians.
Saturday’s outages come a day after a large-scale Russian strike cut electricity to large parts of the capital Kyiv and nine other regions.
DTEK said early Saturday it had restored power to over 800,000 households in the capital following that attack.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky described Friday’s Russian strikes as a “record for villainy” and called for Western countries to increase sanctions on Moscow.

L’HAY-LES-ROSES, France: France’s newly re-appointed prime minister acknowledged Saturday that there weren’t "a lot of candidates" for his job — and that he might not last long in the post given the country’s deep political divides.
Sebastien Lecornu, renamed by President Emmanuel Macron late Friday after a week of political chaos, called for calm and for the support of political parties to produce a budget for the European Union’s No. 2 economy before looming deadlines.
His appointment is seen as Macron’s last chance to reinvigorate his second term, which runs until 2027. His centrist camp lacks a majority in the National Assembly and he is facing increasing criticism even within its ranks.
But rivals from far right to far left slammed Macron’s decision to rename Lecornu, France’s fourth prime minister in barely a year. France is struggling with mounting economic challenges and ballooning debt, and the political crisis is aggravating its troubles and raising alarm across the European Union.
“I don’t think there were a lot of candidates,″ Lecornu told reporters Saturday during a visit to a police station in the Paris suburb of L’Hay-les-Roses.
Lecornu, who resigned Monday after just a month on the job, said he agreed to come back because of the urgent need to find financial solutions for France. But he said he would only stay as long as ″conditions are met,″ and seemed to acknowledge the risk that he could be brought down in a no-confidence vote by the fractured parliament.
″Either political forces help me and we accompany each other ... or they won’t,″ he said.
He wouldn’t say when he expects to form a new government or who could be in it, but has said it wouldn’t include anyone angling for the 2027 presidential election. He didn’t address opposition demands to scrap a contentious law raising the retirement age.
Over the past year, Macron’s successive minority governments have collapsed in quick succession, leaving France mired in political paralysis as it faces a debt crisis that has worried markets and EU partners, and a growing poverty rate.