Ukraine’s Odesa port remained without power after Russia used Iranian-made drones to strike two energy facilities, leaving 1.5 million people in the region without electricity, Reuters reported on Saturday.

“The situation in Odesa region is very difficult,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyi said in his speech on Saturday evening.

“Unfortunately, the impacts were critical, so it will take longer to restore power… It’s not hours, it’s days, unfortunately.”

Since October, Moscow has bombarded Ukraine’s energy infrastructure with large waves of missiles and drones.

Norway is helping to restore the energy system

Norway has sent $100 million to help rebuild Ukraine’s energy system, Zelenskyi said.

Serhiy Bratchuk, the spokesman of the Odesa regional administration, said that the electricity supply to the city’s population will be restored “in the next few days,” and the complete restoration of networks may take two to three months.

Bratchuk said a previous post by the region’s administration on Facebook, which advised some people to consider evacuating, was being investigated by Ukrainian intelligence services as an “element of hybrid warfare” by Russia.

This post has since been removed.

There was no call for evacuation

“Not a single representative of the authorities in the region called for the evacuation of residents of Odesa and the region,” said Bratchuk.

Before the February 24 invasion, which Russia calls a “special military operation” to “denazify” Ukraine, Odesa was home to more than a million residents.

Kyiv says Russia launched hundreds of Iranian-made Shahed-136 drones at targets in Ukraine, describing the attacks as war crimes because of their devastating impact on civilian life. Moscow says its strikes are legal from a military point of view and do not target civilians.

Britain’s Ministry of Defense said on Saturday that Iran’s military support to Russia could increase in the coming months, including the possible supply of ballistic missiles.