It was reported by the DTEK energy consortium, which indicated that only critical infrastructures remain connected

All subscribers in the Ukrainian city of Odessa, except for critical infrastructure, have been disconnected from electricity due to Russian attacks last night against energy facilities, the DTEK energy consortium reported on Saturday.

“Last night there was another Russian attack on energy infrastructure facilities in the Odessa region. Several facilities were destroyed at once,” DTEK said in a statement on Telegram, quoted by Ekonomichna Pravda.

Maxim Marchenko, the region’s governor, revealed that Russia had attacked the city with “suicide drones.” After the attack, “there is no electricity in almost no district or community in our region,” he reiterated.

The statement from the energy consortium added that “due to the magnitude of the destruction of energy infrastructure in Odessa, all consumers, except critical infrastructure, have been disconnected from electricity.”

“The power supply situation in the region and in the city of Odessa is complicated,” he says.

In this sense, he points out, there are also emergency blackouts in the population centers of the region.

With the joint effort of specialists from the DTEK power grid in Odessa and the state power company Ukrenergo, “who work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week,” efforts are being made to restore power supply as soon as possible, says the release.

“At night, the enemy attacked the energy infrastructure of the Odessa region. The rescue operation continues. Two kamikaze drones were destroyed by the air defense forces,” the head of the regional military administration, Serhiy Bratchuk, reported this morning in a Telegram message collected by the Ukrinform agency.

The US and UK have warned that Russia is expanding its military partnership with Iran.
Russia is seeking to obtain more weapons from Iran, including hundreds of ballistic missiles, and in return offering Tehran an unprecedented level of military and technical support, Britain’s UN ambassador Barbara Woodward said on Friday.

She also claimed that since August Iran had transferred hundreds of drones to Russia, which had used them to “kill civilians and illegally attack civilian infrastructure” in Ukraine.

Iran denies supplying the drones to Moscow and Russia has said its forces have not used Iranian drones to attack Ukraine.

“Russia is now trying to get more weapons, including hundreds of ballistic missiles,” Woodward told reporters. “In return, Russia is offering Iran an unprecedented level of military and technical support. She worries us that Russia intends to provide Iran with more advanced military components, which will allow it to bolster its weapons capacity.”

Separately, a White House spokesman also said on Friday that Russia and Iran are expanding their military partnership and warned that Tehran is considering supplying the Kremlin with ballistic missiles in addition to drones that have been used to attack Ukrainian civilian targets.

John Kirby, a US Homeland Security spokesman, said Moscow may be supplying Iran with helicopters and air defense systems; and that the Biden Administration believes that Iranian pilots are training to fly one of Russia’s most advanced fighters, the SU-35.

“We urge Iran to change course and not take these steps,” Kirby told reporters at a briefing on Friday.

Iran has promised to provide Russia with surface-to-surface missiles, as well as more drones, two senior officials and two diplomats, all of them Iranian, told Reuters in October.

The United States said on Wednesday that it had verified the continued supply of Iranian drones to Russia, but that Washington had seen no evidence that Iran had transferred ballistic missiles to Russia for use against Ukraine.

Woodward added that London is “almost certain that Russia is trying to source weapons from North Korea (and) other heavily sanctioned states, as their surplus palpably dwindles.”

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