Kremlin-installed authorities in Ukraine’s southern region of Kherson said Tuesday that power had been fully restored to its main city, after blaming Kyiv for attacks that disrupted water and electricity supplies.
Kherson city was the first urban hub to be captured by Russia after Moscow announced its “special military operation” in February and it has suffered outages after strikes Sunday for which Moscow and Kyiv have traded blame.
“There is electricity, despite sabotage and attacks,” Kirill Stremousov, the Russian-appointed deputy head of the Kherson region said on social media Tuesday.
Ukraine troops have been pushing closer toward the city in recent months and its capture by Kyiv would be a significant defeat for Moscow.
The news Sunday of the outages followed reports from Russian officials that the Kakhovka dam, also in Kherson, had been damaged by a Ukrainian strike.
The dam supplies the Crimean peninsula, which Moscow annexed in 2014 and was used as a launching pad for the beginning of the campaign in Ukraine.
Separately, the Russian security services (FSB) announced the arrest of nine members of an “intelligence and sabotage group” of Ukraine’s forces.
The FSB in a statement accused the group of having planned attacks against senior Russian-installed officials working in Kherson.
Explosives, grenades, ammunition and a car bomb were seized during the arrests and an investigation into “international terrorism” was opened, the FSB said.
As Ukraine presses a counteroffensive in the south, Moscow’s forces have said they are turning Kherson into a “fortress.”
They have for weeks organized a civilian pull-out from the Kherson region as Ukrainian troops advance, which Kyiv labels “deportations.”
