Smokes billow at a gas facility in Ukraine after Russian attack on Friday — AP KYIV, Oct 04 (AP/AFP): Russia carried out its biggest attack of the war overnight, targeting natural gas facilities operated by Ukraine's state-owned Naftogaz Group, Ukrainian officials said Friday.
Ukraine's air force reported that Russia launched 381 drones and 35 missiles, aiming to damage the country's power and gas infrastructure ahead of winter and undermine public morale.
Naftogaz CEO Serhii Koretskyi described the strike as "deliberate terror against civilian facilities" with no military purpose, saying the attacks were meant to disrupt the heating season and deprive Ukrainians of warmth.
The northeastern Kharkiv and central Poltava regions saw 35 missiles, including ballistic types, and 60 drones targeting gas extraction and processing sites, some sustaining severe damage.
Russia's Defense Ministry said its forces struck Ukraine's military-industrial complex and related energy infrastructure, claiming all targets were hit. Ukraine has reported that Russian attacks on power grids and rail networks are intended to weaponize winter.
Russian strike on Ukraine train
station wounds at least 30
A Russian drone strike on a railway station in the northeastern Ukrainian region of Sumy wounded at least 30 people, President Volodymyr Zelensky said Saturday.
Russia's army has repeatedly targeted Ukraine's railway infrastructure since invading in February 2022.
Zelensky called the strike on Shostka station in Sumy "savage". "So far, we know of at least 30 victims" including passengers and railway staff, he said.
He posted a video showing a mangled train carriage engulfed in flames with twisted metal and busted windows. "The Russians could not have been unaware that they were striking civilians," he added.
The site is around 50 kilometres (30 miles) from the Russian border. A separate wave of overnight strikes by Russia's army on Saturday cut off power to some 50,000 households in the northern Chernigiv region.
Drone kills French
photojournalist
A drone killed a French photojournalist on assignment in eastern Ukraine on Friday and wounded a Ukrainian reporter, officials and media groups said.
Antoni Lallican, 37, was embedded with Ukraine's Fourth Armoured Brigade near the front line in the Donbas region when he was killed in a drone attack on the area, said Ukrainian authorities.
Ukrainian journalist Georgiy Ivanchenko was wounded in the same attack, which Ukraine's military and French President Emmanuel Macron blamed on Russia.
Lallican, an award-winning photojournalist whose work had appeared in leading French and international media, is the first journalist to be killed by a drone in the Ukraine war, said the European and International Federations of Journalists.
At least 17 journalists have now been killed in Ukraine since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, according to the groups. UNESCO puts the number killed at 22.
They include AFP video journalist Arman Soldin, killed by rocket fire in 2023.
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