Wednesday 4 November 2026
Russia hits power stations in the Kyiv and Zhytomyr regions, a drone kills a 14 year old near Kyiv, and the Abu Dhabi talks sit a week away
Russia's defence ministry said on Wednesday it had hit two power stations in Ukraine's Kyiv and Zhytomyr regions and a cargo vessel near Odesa, a day after a barrage of 289 drones and 76 missiles knocked out power across swathes of Ukraine. Ukrainian officials reported strikes in six other regions, and a drone strike on a house in Khotiv killed a 14 year old.
The strikes on the power grid are now nearly daily, and they come as temperatures fall. Ukraine's emergency service and local officials reported Russian hits on Wednesday in the Poltava, Dnipro, Kirovohrad and Rivne regions and in Kyiv itself, on top of the two power stations the Russian defence ministry claimed on Telegram in the Kyiv and Zhytomyr regions. Drones damaged an energy facility in Ternopil region during the night of November 3 to 4.
In Khotiv, a village in the Obukhiv district south of Kyiv, a Russian drone hit a private house and the house burned down completely. A 14 year old child died, the head of the Kyiv regional military administration, Tymur Tkachenko, said. In Dnipro, a strike on an enterprise injured two men.
Tuesday's barrage, which Ukraine counted at 289 drones, 17 ballistic missiles and 59 cruise missiles, was aimed at the energy system. Energy Minister Denys Shmyhal said three of the drones were directed at a substation critical to the Khmelnytskyi nuclear power plant, and that Kyiv had alerted the International Atomic Energy Agency. Latvia has called an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council over the attacks on civilians, including the November 2 strike on the aid distribution site at Komyshuvakha, where the death toll reached 33 as of November 3.
The war is also hitting Russian infrastructure. Russian held Crimea ordered power cuts after an accident outside the peninsula, a Moscow installed official said, without giving the cause, and a Ukrainian drone set fire to a logistics hub of the Russian retailer Ozon near Krasnodar. Trilateral talks between Ukraine, Russia and the United States are set for November 10 and 11 in Abu Dhabi. Last month a Kremlin aide said Moscow's attitude to those talks would depend in part on whether Ukraine launched a large scale attack on Russia's National Unity Day, which was Tuesday, November 4. No such attack has been reported.
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