A large-scale Russian drone and missile attack damaged power facilities in eight Ukrainian regions, causing blackouts and forcing nuclear power plants to cut power output, officials and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said on Saturday.

Russia has intensified its attacks on Ukraine’s energy sector and infrastructure in recent weeks, targeting power stations and railway hubs as winter deepens and the war approaches its fourth anniversary.

There was no breakthrough in U.S.-brokered talks this week aimed at ending the conflict.

Ukraine operates three nuclear power plants which produce more than half of the country’s electricity and IAEA said the plants cut production due to “widespread military activities overnight”.

The Ukrainian military said Russia had launched 653 drones and 51 missiles on Ukraine overnight. Ukrainian forces downed 585 drones and 30 missiles, the military said.

Power and heat generation facilities in Chernihiv, Zaporizhzhia, Lviv, and Dnipropetrovsk regions were targeted in the attack, Ukraine’s ministry for development of communities and territories said.

It said on Telegram that 9,500 customers remained without heat and 34,000 without water supply in the southern Odesa region.

“Port facilities (in Odesa) have also been attacked: part of the infrastructure has been de-energised, and operators have switched to backup power from generators,” the ministry said.

“Emergency repair work is already underway where safety conditions permit. Energy companies are doing everything possible to restore power to all customers as quickly as possible,” the energy ministry said on Telegram.

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Among the sites hit overnight was a railway hub near Kyiv, where the depot and railway carriages were damaged, Ukrainian state railway company Ukrzaliznytsia said.

The railway did not report any casualties from the attack, in the town of Fastiv.

“Russia continues to disregard any peace efforts and instead strikes critical civilian infrastructure, including our energy system and railways,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said on X.

“This shows that no decisions to strengthen Ukraine and raise pressure on Russia can be delayed. And especially not under the pretext of peace process,” he added.

Ukrzaliznytsia said on the Telegram messaging app that it was forced to cancel several suburban trains near the capital and the city of Chernihiv in northeastern Ukraine.

The Russian Defence Ministry said its forces launched a “massive strike” overnight in response to what it called Ukrainian attacks on civilian targets.

The ministry said the strike used high-precision, long-range air- and ground-based weapons, including Kinzhal hypersonic missiles and long-range drones.

It targeted Ukraine’s military-industrial enterprises, energy facilities supporting their operations, and port infrastructure used for military purposes, the ministry added.

Separately, sirens sounded early on Saturday in Lubartow in the Lublin region of eastern Poland, private broadcaster RMF FM reported.

RMF quoted local mayor Krzysztof Pasnik as saying the warning was activated due to the situation in Ukraine.

Poland scrambled jets overnight due to the Russian attacks on Ukraine, but the Operational Command of the Armed Forces said there were no airspace violations.

(Reporting by Pavel Polityuk; additional reporting by Alan Charlish in Warsaw; Editing by William Mallard, Bernadette Baum and Aidan Lewis)

The Somali-tied welfare fraud scheme in Minnesota is likely far worse than the American people think, involving “complicit” state government officials and totaling far more stolen money than original early estimates stated, according to Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller.

Billions of taxpayer dollars have been stolen from the state, and much of the welfare fraud has been tied to Somali migrants, as first reported by City Journal. And, alarmingly, some of the stolen money was allegedly funneled to Al-Shabaab terrorists. 

“We believe that the Somali fraud operation in Minnesota is the single greatest theft of taxpayer dollars, through welfare fraud, in American history,” Miller said on Fox News. “We believe we have only scratched the very top of the surface of how deep this goes.”

Miller noted that some of the reported welfare scams include people “pretending that children have autism, who are not in fact autistic,” and “pretending to enroll people in food programs, when, in fact, nobody was ever enrolled.”

These fraudsters, Miller said, engaged in “massive fraud, lying, and theft, and grift on a scale we’ve never seen before in American history.”

“The total bill, the total tab for this, is going to be far beyond the numbers being reported,” he said, suggesting we are dealing with billions of stolen tax dollars tied directly to welfare schemes.

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“Based on the records we already have — this is a significant undercount, by the way — 75% of the Somali population in Minnesota is on welfare, and that’s likely a significant undercount of just how much of a financial burden the Somali refugee population is imposing on this country,” Miller added.

.@StephenM: “We believe that the Somali fraud operation in Minnesota is the single greatest theft of taxpayer dollars, through welfare fraud, in American history… and we believe that what we are going to uncover is going to shock the American people.” pic.twitter.com/h4jfFit0jD

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) December 6, 2025

The Trump administration advisor also claimed that Democrat leaders in the state were “fully complicit” in the fraud.

“We believe the state government is fully complicit in this scheme and we believe that what we are going to uncover is going to shock the American people,” he asserted.

Controversial Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) could be tied up in the scandal.

“Omar’s close ties to the $1 billion welfare scam in her Minnesota congressional district are being uncovered,” the New York Post reported this past week. “Omar held parties at one of the key restaurants named in the fraud, knew one of its now-convicted owners, and one of her own staffers has also been convicted — both for stealing millions. Omar even introduced the bill that led to $250 million in fraud. Yet she claims to have been completely unaware of it.”

There are also serious questions about the oversight, or lack thereof, from Democrat Gov. Tim Walz. 

Currently, the Treasury Department is investigating allegations that “under the feckless mismanagement of the Biden Administration and Governor Tim Walz, hardworking Minnesotans’ tax dollars may have been diverted to the terrorist organization Al-Shabaab,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced this week.

Related: Ilhan Omar Says Trump Supporters Might Attack Somalis, Brushes Off Fraud Scandal