Millions of Ukrainians are still without electricity after the Russian strikes
Ukraine, including its capital, Kyiv, was largely without power and water on Thursday, a day after Russia carried out new massive strikes targeting its energy infrastructure.
According to President Vladimir Zelensky, problems related to water and electricity have arisen in about fifteen regions. “The situation with electricity remains difficult in almost all regions. However, we are gradually moving away from power outages and connecting electricity to new consumers every hour.”
According to the information of the city mayor’s office, almost 70% of the population in Kyiv was left without electricity due to freezing rain falling on snow and near frost, and water supply was restored.
In turn, the Russian Ministry of Defense claimed that the Russian bombings did not target the capital and accused the Ukrainian anti-aircraft defense of being responsible for the damage caused in Kiev.
The rest of Ukraine was also heavily affected by the outages, but reconnection of critical infrastructure to the grid continued gradually.
In the country’s second city, Kharkiv, not far from the border with Russia, supplies have been restored after “very difficult” work, its mayor Igor Terekhov said.
Russian fire continued in Kherson (in the south), where Moscow troops retreated two weeks ago, and in Vyshgorod near Kyiv, with six dead and 30 wounded.
Zelensky said in his evening speech: “We have endured nine months of total war, and Russia has not found a way to break us. And it will not happen. We must continue to hold our position.”
– “To cause pain” –
“This systematic targeting of the population as winter approaches reflects Russia’s clear desire to deprive the Ukrainian people of water, heat and electricity in order to make them suffer and undermine their resilience,” French diplomacy. “These actions clearly constitute war crimes.”
Addressing the UN Security Council by video conference, Mr. Zelensky condemned the “crime against humanity” on Wednesday.
Three nuclear power plants under Kiev’s control were able to reconnect and were supposed to supply homes without electricity again in the evening.
The blasts left “the vast majority of consumers” without electricity in Ukraine, a country of about 40 million people before the Russian invasion began on February 24, according to the Energy Ministry.
According to Kyiv, Russia fired about 70 cruise missiles at the country on Wednesday, and 51 of them were shot down. These strikes targeted key energy infrastructure that had already been damaged by several waves of such bombings.
In total, “eight energy facilities” were damaged, Andrii Kostine, the chief prosecutor of Ukraine, said that ten people were killed and 50 people were injured.
Power outages have also been felt on the frontlines, hospitals have been forced to operate with emergency generators, and fighting continues in the east.
Oleksiy Yakovlenko, hospital administrator in the city of Kramatorsk, told AFP that “the way they are fighting and targeting civilian infrastructure can only cause outrage.”
“If they wait for us to get down on our knees and crawl to them, it’s not going to happen,” he said.
– Warsaw offers its Patriots –
In this context, the Polish Minister of Defense proposed to hand over the Patriot air defense system offered by Germany to Poland to Ukraine.
Russia, in turn, called on Ukraine to comply with its demands.
“The leadership of Ukraine (…) has the opportunity to resolve the situation by satisfying all the demands of the Russian side and put an end to the possible suffering of the civilian population,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov repeated on Thursday. .
Russia, which has justified its war on the need to “azify” and “demilitarize” Ukraine, which it accuses of repressing its Russian-speaking population, claimed in late September that it had annexed four regions of Ukraine that were partially under Russian control.
Moscow announced on Thursday that it had issued Russian passports to more than 80,000 residents of these four Ukrainian territories, making them “citizens of the Russian Federation.”
In turn, Ukraine’s Prosecutor General said that after the recapture of the northern Kherson region in the south on November 11, “nine torture sites” were “discovered”, including “the bodies of 432 civilians killed”. how they died
According to relevant representatives, the exchange of prisoners between the two camps continued on Thursday, with the release of 50 prisoners from each side, compared to the exchange of 35 from each camp the day before.
Another direct result of the Russian bombing, Moldova, already suffering major energy problems caused by the conflict in Ukraine, also suffered widespread power outages on Wednesday, but the situation was largely back to normal by Thursday.
