Almost a third of Ukraine’s power stations have been destroyed in the past week by Russian attacks as Moscow intensifies its pre-winter campaign to target infrastructure.

Power cuts were reported in parts of Kyiv, the Zhytomyr region west of the capital and Dnipro – in the south but far from the front line.

Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky said Russian leader Vladimir Putin was continuing to try to terrorise and kill civilians.

He tweeted: ‘Since Oct 10, 30% of Ukraine’s power stations have been destroyed, causing massive blackouts across the country.’

Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the president’s office, said: ‘The situation is critical now across the country. The whole country needs to prepare for electricity, water and heating outages.’

Two people were killed in Kyiv and one wounded in a missile strike yesterday while power and water were cut in Zhytomyr, a city of 263,000 people. An energy facility in Dnipro, home to 1million, was rocked by two explosions that caused serious damage.

Power plants were also targeted in the president’s home town Kryvyi Rih and in Kharkiv, a city near the Russian border that had a population of 1.43million before the war.

In the strategic southern port of Mykolaiv, a missile completely destroyed one wing of a block of flats, leaving at least one person dead. ‘The Russians probably get pleasure from this,’ said Oleksandr, a florist whose shop was damaged in the attack.

It came a day after ‘kamikaze’ drone strikes in several cities.

The new leader of the invasion force, Gen Sergei Surovikin, is dubbed ‘General Armageddon’ and served in Syria where Russia adopted a scorched earth policy. He is ‘wasting some of his most potent and valuable weapon systems against civilian targets hundreds of miles from the front line’, UK armed forces minister James Heappey said.

Mr Heappey added to the BBC: ‘He is doing so to cause terror to try and break the will of the Ukrainian people. I can promise him that that will definitely not be achieved.’

13 die as warplane hits apartment block

At least 13 people – including three children – were killed when a Russian warplane crashed into an apartment block on home soil.

The pilot of the Su-34 bomber was seen parachuting to safety as it struck the nine-storey building and exploded in Yeysk.

The port, across the Sea of Azov from Ukrainian city Mariupol, houses a large air base.

Russia’s defence ministry said the bomber came down after one of its engines caught fire during take-off for a training mission.

Both crew members bailed out safely but tons of fuel exploded in a huge fireball on impact when it crashed into the flats.

Three of those killed had jumped from the upper floors to escape the blaze.

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