The death toll from Russia's bombing of an aid distribution point in Komyshuvakha rose to 37, the Zaporizhzhia Oblast Military Administration reported on 4 November. Russian attacks on 3 and 4 November killed and wounded civilians across seven oblasts. Moscow also kept hitting Ukraine's power system and aimed drones at a substation serving a nuclear plant.
Russia is running two campaigns at once this autumn: one against people in front-line towns, the other against the grid the whole country relies on. Ukraine says it intercepted a Russian plan for this winter that lists 60 critical infrastructure sites as targets for up to 1,000 missiles, drones, and bombs. Nuclear plants now produce roughly half of Ukraine's electricity, and the substations that feed them have been targeted before. Hitting those links can black out the country without striking a reactor.
Komyshuvakha's toll keeps rising
On the third day of searches, rescuers had identified 12 of the dead, while 59 people were still listed as missing, Ukraine's National Police reported. Some of the missing may be among those already found, and up to 38 more people may lie under the rubble. Ivan Fedorov, head of Ukraine's State Agency for Restoration and Infrastructure Development, said Russia hit people collecting humanitarian aid with a FAB-3000, a three-ton aerial bomb, on 2 November. Five people were injured.
Russia strikes school where civilians recieved aid in Zaporizhzhia Oblast days after Oleshky truce. Nine more bombs hit its shelter, killing at least 26
The underground school was built to a single standard design and checked by every relevant service, but no underground school in Ukraine is designed to withstand a FAB-3000, Fedorov told a briefing, Ukrinform reported. “These were launches of nine aerial bombs, some of them quite rare 'three-thousanders',” he said. Latvian Foreign Minister Baiba Braže called for an extraordinary meeting of the UN Security Council over the strike. Latvia chairs the Council this month.
Russia kills civilians in Zaporizhzhia, Dnipropetrovsk, and Donetsk oblasts
Two Russian strikes on Vilniansk killed a woman, 52, and a man, 63, and injured a man, 59, the oblast administration reported on 4 November. A fire broke out in a five-story apartment building. Russian shelling also killed a 53-year-old man in Bilenke, in the same district. Over the previous day, Russia killed two people and injured three in Zaporizhzhia and its district, striking 51 towns and villages 857 times, Fedorov wrote.
One of largest Russian attacks yet on Ukraine’s energy system forces emergency blackouts across regions and leaves Kyiv without water
On 3 November, Russian drones, artillery, and missiles killed two people in Dnipro and injured 38 across Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, oblast head Oleksandr Hanzha reported. Fourteen people hurt in Dnipro are still in hospital, four in serious condition. Overnight, a Russian strike set an enterprise in Dnipro on fire and injured two men.
On 3 November in Donetsk Oblast, Russia killed one person in Kramatorsk and one in Yasnohirka, where four guided bombs also injured five, oblast head Vadym Filashkin said. Three more people were wounded in Sloviansk.
Russian drones also wounded a 69-year-old woman in Sumy Oblast and, on 3 November, three people at a farm business in Zhytomyr Oblast's Liubar community. In Rivne Oblast, a Russian attack hit a gas station and hurt a man on 3 November, and a woman was injured overnight. In Kherson, a man stepped on a Russian mine.
Drones sent at a substation serving the Khmelnytskyi nuclear plant
During the 3 November mass attack, Russia sent three drones at a substation critical to the stable operation of the Khmelnytskyi nuclear plant, First Deputy Prime Minister and Energy Minister Denys Shmyhal said. He called it “a serious step of escalation.” Ukraine informed the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which had not commented.
Overnight on 4 November, Russia hit an energy facility, a shopping center, and homes in Odesa Oblast, the oblast administration reported. Critical infrastructure in Vinnytsia was also damaged. By late morning, Ukraine's Air Force was still tracking Russian jet-powered drones heading for Bila Tserkva, south of Kyiv.
