More than 10 million Ukrainians were left without power after another wave of Russian raids on vital infrastructure, as concerns about Ukraine’s power supply grew as winter began to set in across the country.
Temperatures plummeted in Ukraine this week, putting the country’s power grid under added pressure as engineers scramble to repair damage caused by new Russian missile attacks, according to state energy company Ukrenergo.
“Due to the dramatic drop in temperature, electricity consumption is increasing daily in those areas of Ukraine where power supply has already been restored after massive missile attacks on energy infrastructure on November 15,” Ukrenergo said in a statement issued on Friday. “This complicates the already difficult situation in the energy system.”
Ukrenergo said it was curtailing the use of electricity in some areas as “a necessary measure to maintain the stability of the energy system” and asked teams to “work around the clock to restore damaged infrastructure in order to return light to Ukrainians.” .
Russian missile attacks hit critical infrastructure in cities across Ukraine this week as many parts of Ukraine, including the capital Kiev, saw the first snowfall of the season on Thursday.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his late-night speech on Thursday that more than 10 million Ukrainians were without electricity and that most were in the regions of Kyiv, Odesa, Vinnytsia and Sumy.
Zelensky said crews were doing everything they could to normalize the supply, but there were “emergency power outages again in addition to scheduled stabilizations.”
Yasno, a power supplier in Kyiv, said the city experienced emergency power outages throughout the day on Thursday, with the grid at less than half its normal supply.
Russian shelling and missile strikes hit civilian infrastructure in various parts of Ukraine on Thursday night.
Zelensky said dozens of people were injured as a result of a rocket attack in Dnipro, while in Zaporizhia seven bodies were recovered from the rubble of a residential building destroyed by Russian shelling. Two more bodies were later found in the Zaporizhzhia site, bringing the toll to nine, his office said on Friday morning.
Three other men were hospitalized after being injured in shelling in Izium in the Kharkiv region. Several gas production facilities in eastern Ukraine were destroyed and others damaged by shelling, while the southern Odesa region was also hit by Russian strikes on Thursday.
Zelensky accused Russia of “energy terrorism” for its repeated attacks on key infrastructure.
“The very fact that Russia has resorted to terror against the energy sector shows the weakness of the enemy,” Zelensky said during his November 3 night speech.
“They cannot defeat Ukraine on the battlefield and therefore they are trying to break our people in this way.”
The Russian Defense Ministry said Thursday’s strikes targeted missile manufacturing facilities along with “fuel and energy infrastructure” linked to the military.
“An arsenal of artillery weapons supplied by Western countries, prepared for shipment to the troops, was destroyed,” the ministry said on Friday. “The transfer of reserves of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the delivery of foreign weapons to the areas of hostilities have been suspended.”
