At least five people have been killed in Ukraine as a result of a massive wave of Russian airstrikes overnight using rockets, cruise missiles and drones, Ukrainian officials said on Friday.
About two dozen others were injured in the strikes, mainly in the Zaporizhzhya and Khmelnytskyi regions, local authorities said.
Ukrainian air defences were only able to intercept about 60% of the more than 150 Russian drones and missiles launched at the country, according to air defence officials.
Eight missiles alone hit the Dnipro hydroelectric power plant in Zaporizhzhia and put the plant, which has a rated outpout of around 1,600 megawatts, out of operation.
According to a statement from the Ukrainian electricity grid operator Ukrenerho, there were supply problems in seven regions. The country's electricity needs had to be covered by imports from neighbouring Poland, Romania and Slovakia.
Ukrainian Railways also reported massive power outages on unspecified routes. Diesel locomotives are being used to ensure train service contiued.
The eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv suffered a total power outage, with Mayo Ihor Terekhov describing the Russian missile barage on the city - Ukraine's second-largest - as the worst since the start of the war.
The missile strikes targeted important energy supply facilities in the city. The attacks knocked out electricity, water, heating and public transport service in the city, while hospitals turned to generators to keep running.
In Moscow, meanwhile, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov finally acknowledged that Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine is a "war," dropping the previous insistance on referring to the fighting only as a "special military operation."
Peskov, who has been President Vladimir Putin's press spokesman since 2000, blamed the war on the West.
The previous "special military operation" term implied that the operation had a limited scope, while the use of the broader term "war" was effectively banned.
"It began as a special military operation, but as soon as the clique emerged, when the collective West became involved on the side of Ukraine, it became a war for us," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov explained in an interview published on Friday in Argumenty i Fakty magazine.
In response to questions from the media, the Kremlin spokesman clarified that Russia was effectively at war, but that the combat operations would retain their current legal status. "De jure, it is a special military operation," he said.
During the war, the Russian military has occupied large parts of Ukraine but was unable to take the capital Kiev. Ukrainian troops later succeeded in driving the occupying forces back from some parts of the country with Western military assistance.
However, Russia still occupies almost a fifth of Ukraine, including Crimea, which it illegally annexed in 2014.
Tens of thousands of people, including many civilians, have been killed in the fighting on the ground, as well as by ongoing Russian attacks using missiles and drones.
In western Russia, at least on person was killed and several injured by shelling from Ukraine, according to local Russian officials.
A woman walking her dog was killed by a strike in the border region of Belgorod, and two other people were badly injured, Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said on Telegram on Friday.
Residential buildings and cars were also damaged, Gladkov said.
The Russian Defence Ministry said eight missiles were intercepted.
This information could not initially be independently confirmed.
The governor of the neighbouring Kursk region, Roman Starovoit, also reported shelling during the night. One person was injured in the neighbouring village of Tyotkina, he said.
A missile also knocked out a power line to the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant in Ukraine on Friday, the plant's management said on Telegram.
Power supply to the plant was guaranteed by a replacement line and there was no risk to the safety of the nuclear power plant, it added.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia had launched more than 60 drones and nearly 90 missiles overnight.
"The world sees the Russian terrorists' targets as clearly as possible: power plants and energy supply lines, a hydroelectric dam, ordinary residential buildings ... Russia is at war with people's everyday lives," he wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
"Russian missiles have no delays, unlike aid packages for Ukraine. 'Shahed' drones have no indecision, unlike some politicians. It is critical to understand the cost of delays and postponed decisions," he added.
Several energy facilities were hit across Ukraine, the country's Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko said.
"The goal is not just to damage, but to try again, like last year, to cause a large-scale failure of the country's energy system," he wrote on Facebook.
The Zaporizhzhya plant is the largest nuclear power plant in Europe. It has been under Russian occupation since March 2022.
