Photo: State Emergency Service of Ukraine, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0). File photo of a Ukrainian thermal power plant after an earlier Russian attack, not a photo of the November 4 strikes.
Russia has struck power stations in Ukraine's Kyiv and Zhytomyr regions, its defence ministry said on Wednesday, November 4, keeping up near-daily attacks on the country's energy system as temperatures fall and a new round of United States-brokered peace talks approaches. The strikes also targeted a cargo vessel at sea near Odesa, Reuters reported.
The Wednesday strikes followed a much larger bombardment on Tuesday, when Russia launched 289 drones, 17 ballistic missiles and 59 cruise missiles at power plants and substations from Odesa in the south to Rivne in the west, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Ukraine's largest private generating company, DTEK, said three of its five thermal power plants had been knocked offline, and emergency power cuts were imposed in Kyiv and six other regions.
A school aid site hit, 33 killed
Zelenskyy said at least 33 people had been killed on Monday when Russia twice bombed a school being used for aid distribution in the village of Komyshuvakha, near the front line in the Zaporizhzhia region. Moscow said its forces had targeted Ukrainian military units in areas around Komyshuvakha and two other settlements in the region — a claim that does not explain the reported civilian toll at an aid site, and one that could not be independently verified from the reports available.
Ukrainian Energy Minister Denys Shmyhal said Russian forces had also directed three drones toward a substation vital to the operation of the Khmelnytskyi nuclear power plant, and that Kyiv had alerted the International Atomic Energy Agency. The plant's safety implications drew attention across Europe, though no radiation incident was reported.
Overnight attacks on Odesa and other regions
Early on Wednesday, Russian forces launched 130 drones and seven missiles at Ukraine, with strikes damaging energy and port infrastructure in the southern Odesa region, Ukrainian military and regional officials reported. According to the Ukrainian Air Force, the attack included one Iskander-M ballistic missile, six S-300 surface-to-air missiles and about 80 Shahed drones. Odesa Governor Oleh Kiper said the region came under two waves of drone attacks, triggering fires and damage to civilian, energy and port facilities, but no deaths or injuries and no electricity outages in the region.
Elsewhere on Wednesday, Ukraine's emergency service and local officials reported strikes in the Poltava, Dnipro, Kirovohrad and Rivne regions as well as the capital, Kyiv. Russia-held Crimea ordered power cuts after an accident outside the region, a Moscow-installed official said, and a drone attack near the southern Russian city of Krasnodar set fire to a logistics hub of retailer Ozon. The cause of the incident in Crimea was not immediately clear.
Talks in Abu Dhabi, one week away
The bombardment comes a week before US-brokered peace talks are due to resume in Abu Dhabi on November 10-11, the first direct Ukraine-Russia talks since February, according to Ukrainian officials. On Wednesday, November 4, the European Commission hosted a working-level coordination meeting in Brussels involving the United States, Ukraine, NATO and other partners to prepare for those talks. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz urged Moscow to engage with the process, Reuters reported.
The attacks, less than two days after the end of a brief humanitarian truce in the Russian-controlled town of Oleshky agreed with the help of US First Lady Melania Trump, did not bode well for the talks, Reuters noted. Last month, a Kremlin aide said Moscow's attitude to three-way talks with Ukraine and the United States would depend in part on whether Ukraine launched a large-scale attack on Russia's National Unity Day, a public holiday observed on November 4.
For Ukrainians, the immediate question is winter. In more than four years of war, Russia has repeatedly targeted the energy system as cold weather approaches, and Wednesday's scheduled electricity restrictions — hourly outages in several regions and limits on industrial consumption — show how quickly the grid strain reaches households and businesses. Whether the Abu Dhabi talks can change that trajectory will be tested next week; for now, the strikes are the story.
Sources: Reuters, "Russia hits power stations in Ukraine's regions of Kyiv, Zhytomyr," November 4, 2026; Reuters, "Russia bombards Ukraine power grid before Abu Dhabi talks," November 4, 2026, via Japan Times and Korea Herald; Ukrainian Air Force and Odesa Governor Oleh Kiper as reported November 4, 2026. Russian claims are attributed to Russia's defence ministry; Ukrainian claims are attributed to Ukrainian officials.