Russian strikes knocked out power to hundreds of thousands of households in Ukraine overnight, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Sunday, as both countries pressed on with long-range attacks despite a local ceasefire holding elsewhere.
Zelenskiy said Russian forces had struck power infrastructure in four Ukrainian regions. He described the intensity of the bombardment as very high and said Moscow was seeking to take advantage of a shortage of ballistic missile interceptors.
The strikes came on the final day of a six-day local ceasefire around Oleshky, the Russian-controlled town in southern Ukraine where a humanitarian operation has evacuated civilians. There was no let-up in fighting along the rest of the front line, with both sides reporting waves of drone attacks through the night.
Ukraine’s air force said it had shot down 371 of 433 long-range drones launched by Russia since Saturday evening, and that dozens were still airborne on Sunday morning. Six separate air alerts had been sounded in Kyiv since midnight. Russia’s defence ministry said its forces had downed 235 Ukrainian drones over Russian regions overnight.
Zelenskiy said Ukraine had separately hit the Kamensky plant in Russia’s Rostov region, which he said was involved in making Russian missiles. Moscow did not comment on the reported attack in Rostov.
In the Nizhny Novgorod region, Governor Gleb Nikitin said a large-scale overnight Ukrainian drone attack had caused significant damage to an industrial facility. He did not identify the site, but the region is home to the NORSI oil refinery, one of Russia’s largest. The regional government said it was taking steps to keep petrol stations supplied and urged motorists to buy fuel only as needed and avoid panic buying, according to Interfax. The warning suggests the damaged facility was linked to refining or fuel supply, though Kyiv did not immediately claim responsibility for the Nizhny Novgorod attack.
The competing damage and shoot-down claims from both sides could not be independently verified.
The exchange follows a row over energy strikes. On Friday, Russia said Ukraine had resumed attacks on its oil refineries and accused Kyiv of ignoring a request from US President Donald Trump to stop such strikes, which Trump has blamed for raising diesel costs before next week’s US midterm elections. Ukraine says it supports a full ceasefire on energy targets, including its own battered power grid, but that Moscow is unwilling to agree.
Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak, who oversees the energy sector, did not mention the Nizhny Novgorod strike in an interview with state television on Sunday, but said Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries were adding to global fuel market imbalances and affecting prices.
Sources: Reuters, “Russian strikes cut power to thousands in Ukraine as drones damage Russian facility”, 1 November 2026, https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russian-strikes-cut-power-thousands-ukraine-drones-damage-russian-facility-2026-11-01/
