kyiv (Reuters) – Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said a Russian attack on his country's energy sector on Saturday targeted gas facilities important for supplies to the European Union.
Russia continues to supply gas to the EU through Ukraine under a transit agreement with Russia's Gazprom (MCX:) that is set to expire in December. Ukraine's energy minister said last month that kyiv had no plans to extend or replace the deal with Moscow, which pays Ukraine to export its gas to the EU.
“The main target was the energy sector, various industry facilities, both electricity and gas transit facilities, in particular those gas facilities that are crucial to ensuring safe supply to the European Union,” Zelenskiy said in his night speech on video.
Zelenskiy, who is campaigning for international partners to provide him with defensive weapons systems, said Ukrainian forces had “managed to shoot down some” of 34 Russian missiles of various types.
He did not say which specific facilities were hit, nor whether the missiles hit those targets.
Ukraine's state oil and gas company Naftogaz said Russia had attacked its facilities but no one was injured and supplies to Ukrainian consumers and customers were not affected.
Maksym Kozytskyi, governor of the Lviv region, which borders Poland, said his region had come under fire during an attack with cruise missiles and Kinzhal hypersonic missiles, although Ukrainian forces shot down three missiles.
It said two critical energy infrastructure facilities in Stryi and Chervonohrad districts were damaged and caught fire, although emergency services quickly extinguished the flames.
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Zelenskiy repeated his earlier call for defensive missiles, particularly Patriot systems, saying Ukraine needed at least seven defensive systems.
“The trajectories of the missiles and the nature of the attack were calculated by the Russian terrorists in such a way that the work of our air defense system was as difficult as possible,” he said. “Every rocket that falls today is a significant result.”
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