Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Twitter that there was a complete power outage in the Kharkiv and Donetsk regions and "partial outages" in the Zaporizhia, Dnipropetrovsk and Sumy regions. He described the Russians as "terrorists" who were not aiming for military targets, but wanted to leave the people of Ukraine without electricity and heating.
The governor of the Kharkiv region said Russian attacks on "important infrastructure" had cut off electricity and water supplies. The emergency services are working to bring the fires in the affected areas under control. The governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region accused Russian troops of attacking "energy infrastructure" to avenge their "defeat on the battlefield".
The governor of the Sumy region reported that at least 135 towns and villages were affected by power outages.
The Russian army surprisingly announced on Saturday the withdrawal of its troops from certain areas in eastern Ukraine. "In order to achieve the goals of the special military operation to liberate Donbass, it was decided to move Russian troops stationed in the Balakliya and Izyum regions," the Defense Ministry said in Moscow. A map published by the ministry on Sunday showed that Russian troops were largely withdrawing from the Kharkiv region.
On Sunday, the governor of the Russian region of Belgorod, which borders Ukraine, Vyacheslav Gladkov, reported in a video message on the Telegram online service that thousands of people had crossed the border in the past 24 hours. Most of them went "in their own vehicles to their relatives" in Russia, Gladkov said.
Ukraine had previously reported the recapture of at least 30 towns in the eastern Kharkiv region. According to this, the Ukrainian armed forces also succeeded in recapturing the eastern Ukrainian city of Kupjansk, which is important for the supply of Russian troops and which had already been occupied at the beginning of the Russian war of aggression.
Military experts see the recapture of Izyum by Ukraine, which was last reported by President Selenskyj on Sunday evening, as a serious setback for the Russian army in eastern Ukraine.
Ukrainian officials praised the "amazing" pace of the counteroffensive. A Ukrainian army chief spoke on Sunday of 3,000 square kilometers that Ukraine had recaptured from Russian troops.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba on Sunday appealed to western allies to supply more arms. "Arms, arms, arms have been on our agenda since spring. I am grateful to our partners who heeded our call: Ukraine's successes on the battlefield are our common successes," he said.
Federal Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Greens) promised Ukraine further support during an unannounced visit to Kyiv on Saturday. Germany will continue to help Ukraine "with the delivery of weapons, with humanitarian and financial support," she said.
At the same time, the situation at the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, occupied by Russian troops, remained worrying. In the plant, the last functioning reactor was disconnected from the power grid early Sunday morning for safety reasons. Attacks around the largest nuclear power plant in Europe recently gave rise to fears of a nuclear disaster
