Successive waves of Russian missiles have crippled almost half of Ukraine’s energy system, Prime Minister Denys Smykhal said on Friday, as heavy fighting rages in areas in the east and south. With temperatures plunging and the capital Kyiv seeing the first snow of the winter, authorities are working to restore power nationwide after some of the heaviest shelling of Ukrainian civilian infrastructure during nine months of war. The United Nations has warned of a humanitarian disaster in Ukraine this winter due to power and water shortages. “Unfortunately, Russia continues to launch missile attacks on Ukraine’s civilian and vital infrastructure. Almost half of our energy system is down,” Shmyhal said. He was speaking at a joint press conference with European Commission Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis, who was visiting Kyiv to discuss the EU’s emergency financial aid. Kherson Children’s Hospital staff used guile and cruelty to keep patients safe from Russian occupiers Before it was hit by missiles, the Polish grain facility was used as a shelter for Ukrainians fleeing the war Editorial: Why the war in Ukraine is unlikely to end soon President Volodymyr Zelensky said earlier that about 10 million people are currently without power in a country with a pre-war population of about 44 million. He said authorities in some areas ordered mandatory blackouts. “The attacking country has officially acknowledged that its goal is to destroy our energy infrastructure and leave Ukrainians without electricity and heat,” Ukraine’s national grid operator Ukrenergo said on the Telegram messaging app. It said Russia had launched six large-scale missile attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure from October 10 to November 15. Russia’s defense ministry said its forces used long-range weapons on Thursday to strike defense and industrial facilities, including “missile manufacturing facilities”. Ukrainian forces shot down two Russian cruise missiles, five air-launched missiles and five Iranian-made Shahed-136 drones in the past 24 hours, the Ukrainian military said. Reuters was unable to verify reports on the battlefield. MURAT YUKSELIR / THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE: GRAPHIC NEWS Russian forces have sacked areas of the southern Kherson region that are now back under Ukrainian control after a recent counteroffensive, Zelensky’s deputy chief of staff said. “After a trip to the region… Kherson, one thing became clear – our people there need a lot of help. The Russians not only killed and mined but looted all the towns and villages. There is almost nothing there,” Kyrylo Tymoshenko said on Telegram. A Reuters eyewitness heard explosions in downtown Kherson on Friday morning and saw black smoke billowing behind buildings. Police blocked off access, but the unrest did not seem to bother hundreds of people in the main square as they queued for humanitarian aid. The square was a frenzied melee of aid queues and displays of patriotism on Thursday as residents celebrated their liberation from months of Russian occupation, but the mood was also one of deep uncertainty. “We are fine, but we don’t know what to expect. Nothing is over yet. On the (eastern) bank of the river the (Russian) forces are concentrated. On this side they gather. We are in the middle,” said Ihor, 48, an unemployed builder. Investigators in liberated areas of the Kherson region have discovered 63 bodies bearing signs of torture after Russian forces withdrew, Ukraine’s interior minister said. Ukraine’s parliament’s human rights commissioner, Dmytro Lubinets, released a video of what he said was a torture chamber used by Russian forces in the Kherson region, including a small room in which he said up to 25 people were held at a time. Reuters was unable to verify the claims made by Lubinets and others in the video. Russia denies that its troops have deliberately attacked civilians or committed atrocities. Residents of the Ukrainian capital Kiev woke up on November 17 to the sound of air raid alarms and the sight of the city covered in fresh snow. Reuters Mass graves have been found in other places previously occupied by Russian troops, including some with civilian corpses showing signs of torture. Russia, for its part, accused Ukraine of executing more than 10 Russian prisoners of war by direct shots to the head. The Defense Ministry responded to a video circulating on Russian social media that it said showed the execution of Russian prisoners. Reuters could not immediately verify either the video or the defense ministry’s claim. There was no immediate response from Kyiv. Russia has moved some troops from Kherson to reinforce its positions in the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk. Ukraine’s military said Russian forces had fired artillery at the towns of Bakhmut and nearby Soledar in the Donetsk region, among others. Russian fire also hit Balakliya in the northeastern Kharkiv region, which Ukraine recaptured in September, and Nikopol, a town on the opposite bank of the Kakhovka reservoir from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the statement said. In the first known high-level, face-to-face US-Russia contact since the invasion of Ukraine, CIA chief William Burns issued a cautionary message this week during talks in the Turkish capital Ankara about the consequences for Moscow. any use of nuclear weapons. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan told Russian leader Vladimir Putin in a phone call on Friday that talks with Ankara had helped prevent an “uncontrollable” escalation in the field. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Moscow did not rule out further high-level meetings with the United States on “strategic stability,” a term used to mean reducing the risk of nuclear war. But Ryabkov also said there is nothing to discuss with Washington on the Ukraine issue. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said any summit between Putin and US President Joe Biden was “ruled out at this time”.
