Russia attacked Ukraine overnight on 8 November with three Kh-59/69 guided missiles and 164 Shahed-type drones, 112 of them jet-powered, Ukraine's Air Force said, recording hits at 23 locations. The strikes targeted power facilities across several oblasts and left more than 600,000 customers without electricity in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast alone. A drone killed one person in a Dnipro suburb, and Russian shelling killed one in Odesa.

Russia is waging its war on Ukraine's cities as a campaign against power and heat, with winter only weeks away. This week alone, Russia fired 115 missiles, nearly 1,900 guided bombs, and more than 3,000 attack drones at Ukrainian cities and communities, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said. On 4 November, it carried out one of its largest attacks of the war on the energy system. Zelenskyy ties the escalation to diplomacy. Russia sees diplomacy "as a subtype of aggression" and is using the strikes to build pressure on Ukraine and its partners before a new push for talks, he said on 7 November. Ukraine is also short of interceptors for its Patriot systems, and the US can help most, he added.

Dnipropetrovsk Oblast takes the hardest hit

More than 600,000 customers in five districts lost power, and hospitals switched to generators, oblast head Oleksandr Hanzha said. The Energy Ministry reported new outages in Dnipropetrovsk, Zhytomyr, Rivne, Sumy, Kharkiv, and Chernihiv oblasts. Emergency blackouts followed in Kharkiv, Poltava, and Sumy oblasts, and Kyiv Oblast switched to them by midday.

In a Dnipro suburb, a drone destroyed at least one private house, the oblast administration said. One person was killed and others were hurt, police said, and the number of injured rose to three, the oblast administration added. Strikes on Dnipro also set warehouses and trucks at a transport company on fire, it reported.

Substations, heating, and a food warehouse

In Zhytomyr Oblast, strikes hit homes and heat and power facilities in four communities, including Ovruch. In the city of Zhytomyr, 140 apartment blocks were left without heating, and more than 312,000 customers in the oblast are on hourly outages, the oblast administration said. Drones destroyed the Ovruch substation, and residents should prepare for a long blackout, the Ovruch city council said.

In Kharkiv Oblast, a Shahed-type drone hit critical infrastructure and cut power to about 250,000 customers, Zlatopil Mayor Mykola Baksheiev said. In Odesa, Russian shelling killed one person and damaged an administrative building. In the morning, Russia hit a food warehouse it had attacked before, starting a large fire, the oblast administration said.

Four ballistic missiles on a Kyiv bridge

The overnight attack followed a ballistic strike on 7 November, when Russia fired 36 ballistic missiles and Ukraine shot down only four, Zelenskyy said. By preliminary data, North Korean KN-23 missiles hit one key energy facility, he added. Six ballistic missiles targeted Kyiv's Pivnichnyi (Northern) Bridge, and four hit it, Zelenskyy said in his evening address. A day earlier, he had warned, citing intelligence, that Russia was preparing a strike on the energy sector, bridges across the Dnipro, and civilian infrastructure.

The bridge was closed in both directions, Kyiv Mayor Vitalii Klitschko said. Zelenskyy ordered the Interior Ministry and the city to prepare backup transport schemes, saying none exist at city level. In October, Russia struck Kyiv's Southern Bridge, and the city began preparing backup river crossings.

Zaporizhzhia: a nuclear plant on diesel and a strike on rescuers

The Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant lost its last external power line at 02:36 on 8 November and now runs on diesel generators alone, Ukraine's nuclear operator Energoatom said. It is the plant's 16th full blackout this year. If the generators fail or run out, the cooling of nuclear fuel is at risk, which could lead to a radiation accident, Energoatom warned.

In Komyshuvakha, also in Zaporizhzhia Oblast, a Russian drone hit rescuers on the morning of 8 November. They have been searching the site of the 2 November guided-bomb strike for a week. Rescue equipment was damaged and no one was hurt, the State Emergency Service said. So far, 55 bodies have been recovered and 45 people are still listed missing, some of whom are probably among the dead already found, the oblast administration said.