The mayor of Kyiv says water and electricity supplies have been restored after a day of Russian missile strikes on Ukrainian energy facilities, including hydroelectric power stations, that caused blackouts, mobile phone outages, and reductions in water supplies.
“The water supply to the homes of Kyiv residents has been fully restored. Thank you to the experts of Kyivvodokanal and DTEK, who worked for almost a day to restore water and electricity [supplies] to the residents of the capital,” Vitali Klitschko wrote on Telegram early on November 1.
Klitschko said that the electricity supply in the Ukrainian capital had also been restored but that blackouts are inevitable because of the extensive damage to the power system after the Russian attacks.
In Mykolayiv, regional military administration chief Vitaliy Kim said on November 1 that Russia fired four S-300 missiles overnight, demolishing half an apartment building in the city and killing one person.
Russia has been targeting Ukrainian energy infrastructure and other civilian buildings with missile, drone, and artillery attacks for weeks amid a Ukrainian counteroffensive that has driven Russian troops out of the northeast and pushed them back in the east and southeast.
In his nightly address, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukraine’s air defenses did a good job shooting down most of the missiles, but that strengthening the country’s air-defense capabilities remains a top priority.
“Our air force and everyone involved in protecting the sky did a very good job today,” Zelenskiy said late on October 31. “Most of the objectives that the terrorists identified as targets were saved. This morning alone, terrorists used 55 cruise missiles for a massive attack. Forty-five of them were shot down. We will continue to strengthen our air defense.”
Zelenskiy added that restoration work was still ongoing in regions targeted by Russian missiles.
Russia launched missiles into several Ukrainian cities on October 31, including the nation’s capital, Kyiv, as the Kremlin continues its relentless assault on critical Ukrainian infrastructure in the hopes of wearing down the population’s will to resist.
Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Oleh Nikolenko called on the Group of 20 major economies to expel Russia and rescind President Vladimir Putin’s invitation to a G20 summit in Bali next month.
Nikolenko said in a tweet on November 1 that Putin’s public acknowledgement that he ordered missile strikes on Ukrainian civilians and energy infrastructure meant “his hands [are] stained in blood” and that “he must not be allowed to sit at the table with world leaders.”
With its eight-month invasion failing and the prospects of a defeat rising, the Kremlin is seeking to terrorize and demoralize the Ukrainian population in an attempt to break it, Western and Ukrainian officials have said. Russia has destroyed more than 40 percent of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure in a few weeks, causing electricity cuts in Kyiv and other places as winter approaches.
Separately, in eastern Ukraine, the military command said there were fierce battles near Bakhmut in the Donetsk region and that Ukrainian forces had held back Russian assaults on two other areas in the region, around Avdiyivka and Uhledar.
Ukraine’s General Staff said in a statement on November 1 that Russia struck more than 50 settlements in the Donetsk region.
Russia is also expanding the forced evacuation of Ukrainian citizens from occupied Kherson as its forces seek to hold the region.
Vladimir Saldo, the Russia-appointed head of Kherson, announced on October 31 that citizens will be evacuated from another seven districts. Just three days earlier, the Russia-installed officials had announced that the evacuation process in the Kherson region had ended.
The Ukrainian military reported that Russian troops are mining evacuated residential areas in the Kakhovka settlement.
In Moscow, the Russian Defense Ministry said all military mobilization activities, including summons delivery, have been suspended. The ministry said in a statement that “all activities related to conscription for military service” have been stopped.
According to the statement, military units will only be accepting volunteers and contractors from now on.
However, the announcement does not amount to an official end to the partial mobilization decreed by Russian President Vladimir Putin in September. That can only be done with an official decree from Putin.
Hundreds of thousands of Russians have fled Russia since Putin declared the partial military mobilization.
