Ukraine was working to restore electricity to hospitals, heating systems and other critical infrastructure in major cities after the latest wave of Russian attacks on the power grid sparked accusations of “crimes of war “.
The volley of missiles launched on Friday plunged several towns into darkness, cutting off water and heating and forcing people to endure freezing cold.
The mayor of the Ukrainian capital, Vitali Klitschko, said on Saturday morning that the city’s metro system was back in service and that all residents had been reconnected to water supplies a day after the latest wave of airstrikes. Russians on critical infrastructures.
He also said heating had been restored to half the city and electricity had been restored to two-thirds.
“But emergency shutdown schedules are in place,” he wrote on the Telegram messaging app. “Because the electricity deficit is significant.”
Ukraine’s national energy provider said its system had lost more than half its capacity after targeted strikes on “backbone networks and generation facilities”.
Ukrenergo warned that the extent of the damage in the north, south and center of the country meant that restoring supplies could take longer than after previous strikes.
“Priority will be given to critical infrastructure: hospitals, water supply facilities, heat supply facilities, sewage treatment plants,” Ukrenergo said in a statement on Friday.
After a string of embarrassing battlefield defeats, Russia has since October continued an air strike against what Moscow calls military-related facilities.
But France and the European Union have said the suffering inflicted on freezing civilians amounts to war crimes, with the bloc’s foreign policy chief calling the shelling “barbaric”.
“These cruel and inhumane attacks are aimed at increasing human suffering and depriving the Ukrainian people,” said Josep Borrell.
Russia fired 74 missiles – mostly cruise missiles – on Friday, 60 of which were shot down by anti-aircraft defense, according to the Ukrainian military.
ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said the strikes left the capital Kyiv and 14 regions affected by power and water cuts.
He called for “increased pressure” from the West on the Kremlin and more air defense systems.
“Our electrical engineers and repair crews have already started working during the air strike and are doing everything possible to restore production and supply. It takes time. But it will be (done),” Zelenskiy said.
In the central town of Kryvyi Rig, where Zelenskiy was born, the airstrikes hit a residential building.
“A 64-year-old woman and a young couple have died. Their little son is still under the rubble of the house,” regional governor Valentyn Reznichenko said, adding that 13 other people were injured.
Oleksandr Starukh, head of the Zaporizhzhia front region, home to Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, said his territory had been targeted by more than a dozen Russian missiles.
Kyiv, meanwhile, withstood one of the biggest missile attacks since the full-scale invasion began. Regional officials said their air defense forces shot down 37 of the 40 missiles.
With about half of Ukraine’s energy network damaged, the national operator warned on Friday of emergency power cuts.
In Bakhmut, a city in the east at the center of the war, held by the Ukrainians, some residents received wood stoves distributed by volunteers, AFP journalists noted.
Oleksandra, 85, braved the cold to pick up medicine from a nearby pharmacy in the Donetsk region town.
“I will survive the winter. I’m just going to walk more to warm up,” the old woman told AFP.
In the south, new Russian bombardments in Kherson, recently taken over by Ukraine, left one dead and three injured.
Kherson has been under persistent Russian bombardment since forces withdrew from Moscow in November, and power was cut in the city earlier this week.
On Thursday, Russian attacks killed 14 people, said Deputy Chief of the President’s Office Kyrylo Tymoshenko.
In the Russian-held Luhansk region of eastern Ukraine, Moscow-based officials said shelling by Kyiv forces left eight dead and 23 injured.
“The enemy is carrying out barbaric bombardments of cities and neighborhoods of the republic,” the Russian-installed leader in Luhansk, Leonid Pasechnik, said on social media.
Moscow said the strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure were a response to an explosion at the Kerch Bridge linking the Russian mainland with the Crimean Peninsula.
The Kremlin said it held Kyiv ultimately responsible for the humanitarian impact of refusing Russian negotiation terms.
Ukrainian defense officials said this week that their forces had shot down more than a dozen Iranian-made attack drones launched in Kyiv, a sign that Western-supplied systems were having an impact.
Ukrainian military leaders have warned that Moscow is preparing for a major winter offensive, including another attempt to take Kyiv.
Aiming to push Moscow to the negotiating table, the EU on Friday imposed new sanctions, adding restrictions on the export of drone engines to Russia or countries like Iran seeking to supply Moscow with weapons.
But NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg told AFP that Russia was preparing for a protracted war.
“We see that they are mobilizing more forces, that they are ready to take a lot of losses as well, that they are trying to get access to more weapons and ammunition,” he said.
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