A Ukrainian TV news presenter has told Newsweek how she was temporarily left in darkness during what has been described as a “massive” Russian missile and drone attack on the nation’s energy infrastructure on Monday.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said over 100 missiles and 100 drones were used in the attacks on Kyiv and the rest of Ukraine which killed at least five people, injured 30 and left citizens racing for bomb shelters.
Air raid sirens sounded across the country around 6 a.m., and there were reports of explosions in the capital at around 8:30 a.m.
As Kyiv was reeling from the strikes, the studio lights went out during a broadcast on the parliamentary channel Rada TV hosted by the presenter Olga Butko.
With the screen caption describing how Zelensky “was not against a diplomatic solution to end the war but not at the expense of territories and the population,” the broadcast from the studio was interrupted, and a map of Ukraine was displayed instead.
The live feed online later showed that the lights were back on and that the station continued to broadcast.
“I was in the studio in the underground parking lot, and at some point when I was on air the lights just went down,” Butko told Newsweek. “Everything went dark, but the broadcast continued. I didn’t know what happened upstairs, but I understood that it was because of the shelling.
“It didn’t last long. We switched to the generator and continued broadcasting despite the shelling,” she said.
Newsweek has contacted Rada TV by email for comment.
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An alert was still in place in Kyiv by midday, and explosions were reported throughout the country. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said 15 of the country’s 24 oblasts (regions) had been attacked by Russia, which mostly targeted “critical civilian infrastructure and our energy system.”
“This is one of the most massive attacks in recent times,” a spokesperson for the humanitarian group Rescue Now, which has provided aid to Ukrainian citizens since Russia’s 2022 invasion, told Newsweek. After an improvement in electricity supplies recently, power outages afflicted many regions following Monday’s strikes, which also hit water supplies and communication links.
“People are scared but are forced to adapt—waking up to explosions, experiencing intense stress, and then, within a few hours, recovering and continuing with their daily lives,” the spokesperson said. “This is, in fact, a significant strain on mental health.”
Newsweek has contacted the Russian Defense Ministry via email for comment.
The wave of strikes on Monday prompted Poland’s armed forces to deploy allied jets in the NATO nation’s southeast to protect its airspace.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian soldiers from an air defense unit in the western Zakarpattia oblast managed to down a Russian cruise missile, with video posted on Facebook showing the incident.
The Kyiv Independent reported that the Russian cruise missile was hit by an anti-air missile, citing Air Force spokesperson Yurii Ihnat, and refuted earlier claims that machine gun fire had downed the missile.
