Occupied Crimea left without power after strike on energy infrastructure; Moscow says it hit a naval-drone workshop at Chornomorsk

Sevastopol and much of occupied Crimea were left without electricity overnight into Saturday, October 24. “As a result of an enemy attack on energy infrastructure outside Sevastopol, our city was temporarily left without power,” the Moscow-appointed governor of the city, Mikhail Razvozhayev, announced shortly after 1:30 a.m.

Razvozhayev said a special regime is in force at the facilities, that social institutions switched to backup power and that crews are trying to restore electricity. He urged residents to conserve phone batteries, use them only for urgent calls and look in the morning for free charging points in cafés, shops and municipal buildings.

The substation that was hit, according to the Kyiv Independent, is the one at Taman, in Russia’s Krasnodar region. Satellite thermal-anomaly data from NASA’s FIRMS system show damage to the facility, which is the main node connecting the Russian grid to the peninsula across the Kerch Strait. NetBlocks recorded widespread internet outages. Local authorities later reported restoration in several cities, but residents of Simferopol, Yalta and Alushta spoke of new outages. In Russia’s Rostov region, Governor Yuri Slyusar said drones hit a substation in the Myasnikovsky district, leaving almost 130 homes without power.

Strikes at sea and in the air

The same night Russia continued its strikes at sea. Russia’s Defence Ministry claims that its drones hit, at the port of Chornomorsk in the Odesa region, a workshop producing unmanned vessels, as well as a dry-cargo ship under way that, according to Moscow, was carrying supplies for the Ukrainian armed forces to Odesa. These Russian claims have not been independently confirmed. The Black Sea has already seen drone attacks on merchant ships this month.

The Ukrainian Air Force counted 126 Russian Shahed-type strike drones for the night from 18:00 on Friday, 61 of them jet-powered, together with S8000 Banderol/Dan-T, Gerbera and Parodiya decoy drones, launched from Shatalovo, Oryol, Bryansk, Kursk, Primorsko-Akhtarsk, occupied Donetsk and Hvardiiske in Crimea. By 08:00, 101 had been shot down or electronically neutralised, with about eight still in the air. Strikes were recorded at 14 locations and debris fell at 5.

On the front line, the Ukrainian General Staff in Kyiv recorded 181 clashes over the previous 24 hours, 88 Russian air raids with 309 guided bombs and 10,270 kamikaze drones. The heaviest fighting was in the Kostiantynivka sector, with 23 attacks, and in Pokrovsk, with 19. The General Staff puts Russian losses for the day at 1,980 troops.

The escalation around energy continues two days after Russia’s announcement that it had downed 808 Ukrainian drones in a single night, and while Kyiv and Moscow have agreed a local ceasefire in Oleshky, in the Kherson region, for a humanitarian operation. The two sides’ general staffs set its start for October 27 at 03:00 Kyiv time (04:00 Moscow time).