Ukrainians are facing -15C with no power to warm them as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he would declare a state of emergency in the energy sector.
Emergency repair crews are working tirelessly to restore power in the Kyiv region, officials said on Wednesday, as the area is among the worst-affected by power cuts caused by Russia’s sustained attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.
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Mr Zelenskyy said he attending a meeting on the “emergency situation in Ukraine’s energy sector, with special attention to Kyiv” as he posted on X: “The consequences of Russian strikes and deteriorating weather conditions are severe.
“Repair crews, energy companies, municipal services, and the State Emergency Service of Ukraine continue to work around the clock to restore electricity and heating.
“Many issues require urgent resolution. I thank everyone involved and working at full efficiency.”
In Boryspil, a town in the Kyiv region, workers have been braving the snow amid temperatures of -15C from early morning till midnight to fix the damage to burned-out electrical systems, Yurii Bryzh, who leads the Boryspil regional department of private electricity provider DTEK, said.
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They have managed to restore the supply for four hours a day.
But Mr Bryzh said the problem was “when the power comes back on, people turn on all the electrical equipment that is available in the house” as they dash to wash, cook or recharge their phones”.
All that activity crashes the system again, he said.
Kyiv residents Mykhailo, 39, and Hanna, 43, said the temperature in their five-year-old daughter’s room has dropped to -15C, so the family huddles in one bed at night under heavy blankets.
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Anton Gerashchenko, a former adviser to Ukraine’s internal affairs minister, said on X: “Kyiv hospitals have to use autonomous boiler houses to keep their patients warm and avoid a humanitarian catastrophe.”
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Zinaida Hlyha, 76, said she heats water on her gas stove and puts it in bottles that she tucks into bed.
She said she doesn’t complain because Ukrainian soldiers on the roughly 1,000km front line have it worse.
Kyiv city mayor Vitali Klitschko wrote on Telegram that heating had been restored to all but about 400 of 6,000 affected apartment buildings and support centres were operating 24 hours a day.
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Earlier this week, Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs accused Russia of a “deliberate Russian campaign against civilian life”.
It added on X: “Russia continues to strike energy infrastructure, choosing the coldest days, when electricity and heat mean survival. This is cynical, life-denying terror.”
Meanwhile, Russia criticised a UK a plan to supply new ground-launched missiles for Ukraine by rapidly developing a weapon that could carry a 200kg warhead over a range of more than 500km (310 miles).
It came as European nations rallied round Ukraine after Donald Trump said Mr Zelenskyy was less willing to make a peace deal than Moscow.
