By Monday afternoon, four regions — Lviv, Poltava, Sumy and Kharkiv — were without electricity, officials said. In Kharkiv, electrically powered trolleys, buses and trams glided to a stop. Electric trains headed west from Kyiv never made it out of the station. In all, 11 infrastructure sites were reported to be hit.
“Today, the enemy is testing us,” said Ihor Terekhov, the mayor of Kharkiv. “The aggressor takes out his anger on the civilian population.”
Ukrainian officials said they would resort to rolling blackouts to avoid overloading backup electrical lines, and warned citizens to brace themselves for outages.
By Monday evening, electricity was reconnected to most of Kharkiv, the State Emergency Service announced in a Facebook post. Power had also been mostly restored in Lviv, and all residents should expect to have water by morning, Andriy Sadovyi, the city’s mayor, said in a Twitter post.
Most of the targets, said Mr. Arestovych, the Zelensky adviser, were infrastructure responsible for providing heat and electricity to civilians. Ukraine’s military, he said, will not be affected. “They do not count on the regular power grids,” he said. “They have their generators, their own means of producing electricity.”
The tactic of trying to freeze Ukrainians into submission is not new. The Kremlin has for years studied Ukraine’s energy networks and has sought to manipulate prices or cut natural gas deliveries to influence politics. Twice before, Russia has cut natural gas supplies to Ukraine in midwinter.
Now, it is pursuing the same goal with bombs.
The approach may be unlikely to force Ukrainians to the bargaining table, experts said.
