UPDATE 2-Russian attacks cut power, heating for tens of thousands in southern Ukraine

Tens of thousands of people were left without power and heating in southern Ukraine after Russian attacks on the frontline city of Kherson and Ukraine's largest seaport, Odesa, authorities and a top energy provider said on Thursday. Russia has sharply increased its attacks on Ukraine's energy and utilities sector as winter approaches, plunging swathes of cities and regions into darkness.

Tens of thousands of people were left without power and heating in southern Ukraine after Russian attacks on the frontline city of Kherson and Ukraine's largest seaport, Odesa, authorities and a top energy provider said on Thursday.

Russia has sharply increased its attacks on Ukraine's energy and utilities sector as winter approaches, plunging swathes of cities and regions into darkness. State oil and gas firm Naftogaz said a heat and power plant in the southern city of Kherson had been "almost completely destroyed." Regional governor Oleksandr Prokudin said the attack left 40,500 customers without heat.

"This is a purely civilian facility providing heat to residents," Naftogaz CEO Sergii Korteskyi wrote on X. "Such targeted bombing is terrorism." Kherson, a frontline city that was for several months occupied by Russian forces after Moscow's invasion in February 2022, comes under Russian missile, drone and artillery attack on an almost daily basis.

Separately, Ukrainian energy company DTEK said on Thursday that Russia attacked its energy facility in the southern Odesa region overnight, leaving 51,800 households without power. In Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region, where Russian forces are grinding forward in the battlefield, attacks left about 60,000 residents without power, Kyiv's energy ministry said.