Ukraine suffered another night of Russian bombardment, with drones and missiles targeting civilian sites, including energy infrastructure, at several sites across the country, Kyiv’s military said, as a defiant Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy vowed his country will "endure" despite the ongoing Russian onslaught.
Russia has recently increased its attacks on Ukrainian energy installations, with significant damage reported, sparking fears in Ukraine of a repeat of the power outages they experienced in the winter of 2022-23 when Russia targeted Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, causing frequent blackouts.
SEE ALSO: Ukraine Live Briefing: Fighting Rages Near KharkivUkraine's largest private energy firm, DTEK, said on March 30 that five of its six plants had been damaged or destroyed, with 80 percent of its generating capacity lost, and that repairs could take up to 18 months.
“Now there is no night or day when Russian terror does not try to break our lives. Last night, they again fired missiles and Shahed drones against people. But we defend ourselves, we endure, our spirit does not give up and knows that it is possible to avert death. Life can prevail,” Zelenskiy wrote in a social media post published on March 31 to coincide with the Easter holiday.
Earlier, the Ukrainian Air Force reported that Russia had launched a total of 16 missiles and 11 drones at Ukraine in the overnight attack. It said the air force had managed to destroy nine of the drones and nine of the missiles.
One person was reported killed in a Russian overnight strike on energy infrastructure in the Lviv region, in western Ukraine, local officials said.
A 19-year-old man was killed in the Kharkiv region, the local governor said, after a projectile hit a gas station.
The latest strikes damaged energy infrastructure in the Odesa region and an agricultural facility in the Kherson region as well. Eight Shahed drones were shot down in the Odesa region by Ukrainian air-defense units, authorities said, with debris from falling drones triggering a fire at a local power plant.
Blackouts were reported in the region. The fire was extinguished, and no injuries were reported, the military said.
In the Kherson region, the Ukrainian military said a dormant agricultural facility was struck in a Russian aerial assault. No injuries were reported.
The latest Russian attack comes as news emerged on March 31 that Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree on routine spring conscription, calling up 150,000 citizens for military service.
WATCH: In the early days of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russian forces took the city of Bucha, near Kyiv, and killed hundreds of civilians, according to Ukrainian officials. The troops then withdrew on March 31, 2022. Residents of Bucha are still working to identify all the victims while also pushing for the atrocities committed there to be acknowledged internationally as war crimes.
Your browser doesn’t support HTML5
Two Years Later, Massacre Of Ukrainian Civilians In Bucha Is 'Impossible To Forget'
In July, Russia's lower house of parliament voted to raise the maximum age at which men can be conscripted to 30 from 27. The new legislation came into effect on January 1.
Compulsory military service has long been a sensitive issue in Russia, where many men go to great lengths to avoid being handed conscription papers during the twice-yearly call-up periods.
Conscripts cannot legally be deployed to fight outside Russia and were exempted from a limited mobilization in 2022 that gathered at least 300,000 men with previous military training to fight in Ukraine -- although some conscripts were sent to the front in error.
In September, Putin signed an order calling up 130,000 people for the autumn campaign and last spring Russia planned to conscript 147,000.
Meanwhile, France will deliver hundreds of old armored vehicles and new surface-to-air missiles to Ukraine, French Defense Minister Sebastien Lecornu said on March 31.
In an interview with La Tribune Dimanche, Lecornu said that President Emmanuel Macron, following talks with Zelenskiy, had asked him to prepare a new aid package, which will include old but still functional French equipment.