President Volodymyr Zelensky has called on Ukrainians to save energy amid relentless Russian attacks that have halved the country’s power capacity, as the United Nations health body warned of a humanitarian disaster in Ukraine this winter.
Officials said millions of Ukrainians, including in the capital Kyiv, could experience power cuts until at least the end of March due to rocket attacks, which Ukraine’s national grid operator Ukrenergo said caused “colossal” damage.
Temperatures have been unusually mild in Ukraine this fall, but they are starting to dip below freezing and are expected to drop to -20C or even below in some areas during the winter months.
Russia’s attacks on Ukraine’s energy facilities follow a series of battlefield setbacks that included the withdrawal of Russian forces from the southern city of Kherson to the eastern bank of the mighty Dnipro river that bisects the country.
“Saving electricity remains critically important,” Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said on Telegram today, reports RTE.
Ukrenergo chief Volodymyr Kudrytskyi said today that virtually no thermal or hydroelectric plants escaped unscathed, though he rejected the need to evacuate civilians.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said hundreds of Ukrainian hospitals and health facilities are without fuel, water and electricity.
“The systematic damage to our energy system from strikes by the Russian terrorists is so considerable that all our people and businesses should be mindful and redistribute their consumption throughout the day,” Mr Zelensky said in a nightly video address, reports RTE.
Workers are rushing to repair damaged electrical infrastructure, according to Sergey Kovalenko, head of YASNO, which supplies power to Kyiv.
In a Telegram message to Kherson residents, especially the elderly, women with children, and the sick or disabled, Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk posted several ways residents can express their interest in leaving.
“You can be evacuated for the winter period to safer regions of the country,” she wrote, reports RTE.
Russia’s attacks on energy infrastructure are a consequence of Kyiv’s reluctance to negotiate, the state news agency TASS said last week, citing Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
Ukraine’s presidential adviser, Mykhailo Podolyak, said Russia was shelling Kherson from across the Dnipro river now that its troops had fled. “There is no military logic: they just want to take revenge on the locals,” he tweeted late yesterday, reports RTE.
Ukraine’s Suspilne news agency reported new explosions in the city of Kherson today.
Moscow denies deliberately targeting civilians in what it calls a “special military operation” to rid Ukraine of nationalists and protect Russian-speaking communities.
The nine-month war killed tens of thousands, uprooted millions and affected the world economy. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development has said the world’s worst energy crisis since the 1970s will cause a sharp slowdown, with Europe hardest hit.
Battles continued in the east, where Russia is pushing an offensive along a stretch of the front west of the city of Donetsk held by its proxies since 2014.
“Attacks continue to damage critical infrastructure and civilian homes,” Ukraine’s General Staff said, reports RTE.
Four people have been killed and four injured in Ukrainian-controlled areas of the Donetsk region in the past 24 hours, regional governor Pavlo Kyryleno said on the Telegram messaging app.
Russian shelling also hit a humanitarian aid distribution center in Orihiv, southeastern Ukraine, on Thursday, killing a volunteer and wounding two women, the regional governor said.
Orihiv is about 110 km (70 miles) east of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which has been attacked again in recent days, with Russia and Ukraine sharing blame for the explosions.
Sevastopol is the headquarters of the Russian Black Sea Fleet.
Meanwhile, Ukraine today received a new tranche of 2.5 billion euros in financial support from the European Union, Finance Minister Serhiy Marchenko said.
In Washington, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the disbursement of $4.5 billion in US economic aid to Ukraine would begin in the coming weeks to bolster economic stability and key government services.
Ukraine’s SBU Security Service and police raided a 1,000-year-old Orthodox Christian monastery in Kyiv earlier today as part of operations to counter alleged “subversive activities by Russian special services”, the SBU said, reports RTE.
The vast complex of the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra, or Cave Monastery, is a Ukrainian cultural treasure and the headquarters of the Russian-backed wing of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church that falls under the Moscow Patriarchate.
The Russian Orthodox Church condemned the raid as an “act of intimidation”.
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