In a chilling escalation of the nearly four-year war, Russia unleashed a massive aerial assault across central and eastern Ukraine on November 8, 2025, leaving devastation in its wake and plunging swathes of the country into darkness. Ukrainian authorities reported at least 11 people killed and dozens more injured as hundreds of drones and missiles targeted residential buildings and critical energy infrastructure, with the attacks coinciding with renewed diplomatic deadlock and the onset of another harsh winter.
According to the Ukrainian Air Force, the overnight barrage was unprecedented in scale: 503 projectiles were launched, including 458 drones and 45 missiles. Ukrainian forces managed to intercept 406 drones and 9 missiles, but 78 projectiles struck 25 different locations, causing widespread destruction. As reported by ABC News, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy lamented in a Telegram post that the targets of the latest Russian strikes "remain the same: ordinary life, residential buildings, our energy system, and infrastructure."
The city of Dnipro, Ukraine’s fourth-largest, bore a heavy brunt of the assault. A Russian drone slammed into a nine-story apartment building while many residents slept, killing three people and injuring at least 11 others, including children. Emergency services described harrowing scenes as a fire broke out and several apartments were destroyed. One survivor, speaking to AP, described the chaos: "It was the middle of the night. The explosion shook everything. We ran to the corridor, and all we could see was smoke and flames."
Elsewhere, the violence was equally grim. In the Kharkiv region, a worker at an energy company was killed, while eight others were injured in the suburbs of Kharkiv city. Additional casualties were reported in Chuhuiv and Hrushivka, and the mayor of Kharkiv warned of significant electricity shortages following the strikes. The Poltava and Kyiv regions also suffered injuries and energy infrastructure damage, with rolling blackouts imposed to compensate for the losses. Authorities in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia reported further fatalities and injuries, as well as extensive damage to both private homes and multi-story buildings.
These attacks mark the ninth large-scale assault on Ukraine’s gas infrastructure since October 2025, according to the state-run energy firm Naftogaz. The company accused Russia of deliberately "targeting enterprises that provide Ukrainians with gas and heat" during the winter months, a sentiment echoed by Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko, who stated: "Several major energy facilities were damaged around Kharkiv and Kyiv, as well as in the central Poltava region." The strikes knocked offline thermal power plants operated by Ukraine’s state energy company Centrenergo, which had only recently been restored after previous attacks.
Russia’s Ministry of Defense confirmed in a statement that the "massive strike" was carried out in response to what it called "Ukraine's terrorist attacks on civilian targets in Russia." The ministry asserted that the targets were military and energy sites supplying Ukrainian forces, a claim that Kyiv and Western observers have repeatedly disputed, citing the regularity with which civilian infrastructure is hit.
As Ukraine’s power grid came under sustained attack, the country’s leaders renewed their calls for stronger international sanctions on Russia. President Zelenskyy insisted, "Russian strikes show that the pressure must be stronger. Russian nuclear energy is still not under sanctions, Russian military-industrial complex still receives Western microelectronics, more pressure is needed on oil and gas trade as well." He also vowed to "find a way to ensure there is no Russian oil in Europe," following Hungary’s exemption from recent U.S. sanctions targeting major Russian oil producers. "We will not allow it. We will not let the Russians sell oil there. It’s a matter of time," he told reporters, as cited by AP.
While most of the European Union’s 27 member states have sharply reduced or halted imports of Russian fossil fuels since the full-scale invasion in February 2022, Hungary and Slovakia have continued pipeline deliveries, with Hungary even increasing its reliance on Russian crude. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, a frequent critic of EU policy and ally of former U.S. President Donald Trump, has argued that his landlocked nation has no alternatives—a claim disputed by critics who say energy diversification is possible.
The conflict’s front lines remain fiercely contested. In the eastern Donetsk region, the battle for the strategic city of Pokrovsk has reached a critical stage. Russian troops have advanced near Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad, claiming to have encircled both towns, while also surrounding Ukrainian defenders in Kupiansk, a key railway hub in Kharkiv. Ukrainian top general Oleksandr Syrskii said Kyiv’s troops were stepping up assaults around Dobropillia to ease pressure on Pokrovsk, where house-to-house fighting rages and tens of thousands of Russian troops are pushing to "liberate" buildings held by Ukrainian soldiers for more than a year. The situation on the ground could influence Washington’s stance and the trajectory of any future peace negotiations, analysts suggest.
Meanwhile, the nuclear dimension of the conflict remains a source of anxiety. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirmed that Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant—located in Russian-occupied territory—had been reconnected to the grid with a second transmission line after operating on diesel backup generators for a month. The facility, which is not currently in service, still requires reliable power to cool its six shutdown reactors and spent fuel, and has lost external power ten times since the onset of the invasion. Each incident heightens fears of a potential nuclear catastrophe.
Russia, for its part, reported repelling a "massive" Ukrainian drone strike on energy facilities in the southern Volgograd region, which caused power outages but no casualties. The Russian Defense Ministry claimed to have shot down 82 Ukrainian drones overnight, including eight over Volgograd, and two people were reportedly wounded in the neighboring Saratov region after a Ukrainian drone strike blew out windows in an apartment building.
As the war grinds on with no diplomatic breakthrough in sight, both sides appear to be escalating their assaults on each other’s energy infrastructure, seeking to weaponize winter and break civilian resolve. With temperatures dropping and power grids under relentless attack, ordinary Ukrainians face a season of uncertainty and hardship. President Zelenskyy’s call for "more pressure" on Russia is a stark reminder that, for now, the end to this conflict remains elusive—and the human toll continues to mount.
