Kyiv’s Power Plant Struck for a Second Night Running
Russian ballistic missiles hit the Darnytska plant that heats much of eastern Kyiv, killing two people and injuring twenty-one in an apartment block. “Once again, no advance warning from our partners,” Volodymyr Zelensky said. He has separately said Washington warned it could cut intelligence sharing unless Ukraine stops striking Russian refineries.
Two separate things are being said and they should not be welded together. The president told an American broadcaster that the administration had warned it could cut off intelligence sharing unless Ukrainian forces stop long-range drone strikes on oil refineries inside Russia — a specific condition, though he did not say who delivered it or when. Separately, he says no early warning came before last night’s strike. He does not claim the second followed from the first, and his own foreign minister Andrii Sybiha attributed the missing alert to a “special type” of Russian weaponry rather than to anything political. The White House declined to say whether it had made such a threat, pointing instead to Mr Trump’s remark that “we are helping them, and we are sharing intel” — which answers a different question. The plant has been hit before: a strike in February left more than a thousand buildings, forty-seven schools and eighteen medical institutions without heating. Mayor Vitali Klitschko says several energy facilities were struck. He meets the prime minister in London today.