KYIV — Russian attacks on Ukraine's energy infrastructure overnight and on Friday morning, October 23, left more than half a million people without electricity across several regions, the United Nations said in its daily briefing, reporting what Ukrainian authorities had told humanitarian officials.

Source: United Nations daily press briefing, October 23, 2026

A power plant suspended operations after sustaining significant damage, the UN said. Authorities also reported that civilians, including children, were killed and injured in attacks across Ukraine between Thursday and Friday morning, the briefing said, without giving a total figure.

Source: United Nations daily press briefing, October 23, 2026

Ukraine's Deputy Minister for Energy, Artem Nekrasov, quoted by the Ukrainian news agency Unian, said Russian forces had attacked energy infrastructure in the Zhytomyr, Volyn, Mykolaiv, Poltava, Khmelnytskyi and Rivne regions. He said repairs were under way in the Odesa and Ternopil regions for damage from previous attacks, and that shelling and hostilities had caused new power cuts in the Donetsk and Kharkiv regions.

Source: LaPresse, quoting Unian and Deputy Energy Minister Artem Nekrasov

Aid workers also hit

In Kharkiv, an attack on Thursday damaged vehicles and a generator belonging to a non-governmental organisation, humanitarian officials told the UN. Nearly two-thirds of the more than 250 humanitarian access incidents recorded between January and August involved violence against aid workers, their assets and their facilities, the briefing said.

Source: United Nations daily press briefing, October 23, 2026

The latest strikes follow a pattern reported by Reuters this month of Moscow battering Ukrainian energy infrastructure ahead of winter, alongside attacks on logistics, businesses and data centres, while Kyiv struggles with a shortage of air-defence weapons. The reports cited in this story did not include a Russian response to the overnight attacks.

Source: Reuters, October 23, 2026