Russia just knocked out power for hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians

Russia just hit Ukraine's power grid again.

Hundreds of thousands of people are without electricity right now, across at least eight regions.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine's President, says the overnight strikes hit energy infrastructure in four regions — Dnipropetrovsk, Vinnytsia, Zhytomyr and Khmelnytskyi. He says Russia's attack on those four regions has left hundreds of thousands of families without power.

But Ukraine's Ministry of Energy tells a slightly different story. It says eight regions lost power today: Zhytomyr, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Kyiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Sumy, Cherkasy and Kharkiv.

So those two lists don't fully match. Vinnytsia and Khmelnytskyi only show up in Zelenskyy's version. Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Kyiv, Sumy and Cherkasy only show up in the Ministry's.

Either way, it's not the power stations that got hit. It's the substations, the transformers, the lines that actually carry electricity into people's homes.

And two regions are in the worst shape. The Ministry of Energy says Dnipropetrovsk and Kyiv have it worst, and says quote "suffered extensive damage". That means the grid physically cannot send power to people right now, even where the lights would otherwise work.

So what does that look like on the ground?

In Dnipropetrovsk region, nearly 100,000 people are still without power, in the Dnipro, Pavlohrad and Samar districts. Oleksandr Hanzha, who runs the regional military administration there, says power had almost fully come back after an earlier attack — and then this new strike knocked it out again. More than 70 repair teams are out working right now. Water is back on in the city of Dnipro, at least.

In Zhytomyr region, more than 650 settlements have lost power. That's according to Vitaliy Bunechko, who heads the regional military administration there. No deaths and no injuries reported in Zhytomyr so far. One town, Zviahel, is expected to get power back by 5pm today, if that holds.