KYIV, Jan 5 (Reuters) – Russia launched five missile strikes on Ukraine’s second-biggest city Kharkiv on Monday, damaging energy infrastructure, and attacked an enterprise owned by U.S. agricultural producer Bunge in the southeastern city of Dnipro, Ukrainian officials said.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said the Dnipro attack, which caused a leak of sunflower oil, underscored the fact that Russian forces were targeting U.S. businesses. Russian President Vladimir Putin, he said, had “complete disregard” for U.S.-led efforts to resolve the nearly four-year-old war.
Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov said the strikes on his city were “not just an attack on facilities. It’s an attack on heating, on water, on people’s normal lives. They are trying to break us with fear and darkness.”
Terekhov gave no details on which targets had been hit.
Kharkiv’s regional prosecutors’ office said in a statement that at least one civilian was injured in the attack.
In Dnipro, the attack on the Bunge enterprise triggered a leak of 300 metric tons of sunflower oil, said Borys Filatov, the mayor.
“Public utility workers are cleaning up, spreading sand and gravel,” Filatov wrote on the Telegram messaging app, adding that the spill would close a major riverside road for two or three days.
Sybiha, writing on the X social media platform, said: “This attack was not a mistake — it was deliberate, as the Russians attempted to strike this facility multiple times. Russia has been targeting American businesses in Ukraine systemically.”
He said the attacks exposed Putin’s “complete disregard for peace efforts led by President Donald Trump. This is why it is so urgent to advance the peace process.”
There was no immediate comment on the strikes from Moscow.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy met U.S. President Donald Trump in Florida late last month to discuss ending the war, and more than 30 leaders are set to attend a summit on Ukraine in Paris on Tuesday.
ENERGY ATTACKS
Kharkiv, with over a million inhabitants, is located close to the border with Russia.
The temperature was around minus 3 degrees Celsius (27°F) during the day on Monday and will drop at night. According to the local electricity supplier, prior to the latest attack residents received power for an average of 14-16 hours per day.
Since November, Russia has sharply increased both the number and intensity of attacks on Ukraine’s energy system and logistics, plunging entire regions into darkness.
A third of Ukraine’s capital Kyiv was left without heating after a vast Russian attack in late December, while Ukraine’s largest seaport, Odesa, was virtually cut off from power for several days following a series of attacks.
Russia also attacked stations that produced heat for the Chernihiv region on the Russian border and Kherson in the south.
(Reporting by Yuliia Dysa and Pavel Polityuk; Editing by Peter Graff, Ron Popeski and Rosalba O’Brien)
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