Russia Blames Ukraine for Attack on Leaders Deep in Occupied Territory

But the explosions appear to demonstrate that Ukraine has the ability to obtain intelligence and strike high-value targets in the area.

“Someone directed the fire intentionally,” Russian lawmaker Aleksei Zhuravlyov, who was present at the scene, told state news agency TASS. The explosions occurred 10 minutes after the arrival of Vitali Khotsenko, the Russian-appointed prime minister of the Donetsk region, who was injured, Mr. Zhuravlyov said. The news agency didn’t provide details of the injury.

Ukrainian partisans in areas seized by Russia since its full-scale invasion in February have played a critical role in providing targeting information for Ukrainian artillery gunners and have worked with special forces to assassinate leading collaborators. The apparent attack using inside information from Donetsk, which has been under Moscow’s control for nearly a decade, suggests Ukraine retains some intelligence capabilities there, too.

The incident came a day after Ukrainian President

Volodymyr Zelensky

visited Washington where he urged the U.S. to increase military and other aid to Kyiv in its fight against Russia. On the same day, Moscow announced an expansion of its military capabilities, suggesting that Russia is digging in for a long war.

Mr. Zelensky landed in Poland Thursday on his way back to Ukraine and met with Polish President

Andrzej Duda.

The presidents discussed strategic plans and bilateral relations, Mr. Zelensky said in a statement.

In his regular evening address, recorded as a selfie cellphone video, Mr. Zelensky said he was returning from the U.S. with good results, noting that the U.S. would provide Ukraine with a Patriot antimissile battery and financial support.

“I thank President Biden for his help, and his international leadership, and his determination to win,” Mr. Zelensky said.

On Thursday, President

Vladimir Putin

struck a defiant tone, repeating his accusation that the West was provoking and fueling the war and insisting that Russia would be victorious. He said that Russia has never refused to negotiate and that “sooner or later … all armed conflicts end with some kind of talks on the diplomatic track, one way or another.”

Commenting on the explosions in Donetsk earlier,

Dmitry Rogozin,

the former head of Russia’s space agency, Roskosmos, said he was injured by a small metal fragment in his back and would require surgery. Mr. Rogozin, who now heads a group of Russian military advisers called “Imperial Wolves,” wrote on his Telegram channel that several other people close to him were also injured.

Mr. Rogozin has regularly stayed in the hotel in recent months and was holding a working meeting with a small group after returning from a volunteer military unit. He said that during the eight years of conflict in the Donetsk region that preceded the current war, the hotel had never been shelled.

“Someone leaked information, and around 19:45 there were several high-precision strikes, including precisely in the place where we were located,” Mr. Rogozin said. “The investigation will determine where and who” leaked the information, he added.

Ivan Prikhodko, mayor of the Donetsk region town of Gorlovka, said he received a concussion as a result of the attack.

“[I] was shellshocked,” he told TASS on Thursday, and he was hospitalized, the agency reported.

Also, on Thursday, the head of the village of Lyubimovka in the Kakhovka district of the Russian-occupied Kherson region that has been under constant bombardment in recent weeks was killed in a car explosion, TASS reported.

Andrei Shtepa died after explosives that were planted in his car went off, the news agency reported citing a source.

Heavy fighting continued in eastern Ukraine, as Kyiv’s forces repulsed Russian efforts to break through there, Ukraine’s military said.

Around Kyiv, meanwhile, engineers are working around the clock to fix the electrical grid and restore full power amid continued power outages that demonstrate the cumulative toll of waves of Russian missile and drone attacks on civilian infrastructure.

The main problem isn’t power generation, but the damage done to the networks that deliver electricity to homes and businesses, said Serhiy Popko, head of the Kyiv City Military Administration.

“The situation in Kyiv with energy supply remains difficult,” Mr. Popko said Thursday.

Emergency power outages of indeterminate length remain in effect as repair crews work to restore the system.

“We need time,” Mr. Popko said.

On Wednesday, Russia’s defense minister,

Sergei Shoigu,

said Russian troops would “continue to destroy military targets, to deliver massive high-precision strikes on the military control system, defense-industry enterprises and related facilities, including energy facilities.”

On Thursday, the Defense Ministry released a video of Mr. Shoigu inspecting Russian forces stationed in the military operation zone, but didn’t disclose his exact location. The ministry said he inspected the accommodation of troops and the military hardware at the temporary bases of units, met with service personnel and was briefed by unit commanders, it said.

Russia has targeted Ukraine’s power system in recent weeks in an effort to wear down the civilian population. It doesn’t appear to be working. There has been no mass movement of people out of Kyiv, and people are adapting.

Restaurants provide separate menus for when power is out, eateries with generators have turned into makeshift offices where laptops crowd every table and people use their cellphone torches to find their way at night through dark streets where the lights are off.

Mr. Zelensky lauded his people’s resilience in a message to congratulate power engineers on Thursday.

“Even if the enemy can temporarily deprive us of light, it will still never succeed in depriving us of the desire to fix everything, to mend and restore to normal,” he said. “Together we will overcome any darkness.”

Write to James Marson at james.marson@wsj.com and Ann M. Simmons at ann.simmons@wsj.com