KYIV, UKRAINE: As winter frost builds and temperatures drop, Ukraine worked to restore the power grid on Tuesday after the most recent round of Russian missile strikes across the nation caused outages.
President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed that “most” of the 70 missiles Moscow launched were intercepted, but the barrage still hit Ukraine’s already-damaged infrastructure.
According to the national electricity provider Ukrenergo, new power outages have been announced in all regions “due to the consequences of shelling.” According to the head of Ukrenergo, he had “no doubt that the Russian military had a consultation with Russian power engineers during this attack” based on the missiles’ landing locations.
Volodymyr Kudrytskyi said that the attacks began as the country entered a “peak frost” period. He claimed that the Russians’ desire to cause the greatest amount of damage was related to the time they chose for their attack. “Our technicians will begin work on restoring the energy system.”
Russian strikes destroyed power infrastructure
After months of attacks on the country’s power infrastructure, nearly half of Ukraine’s energy system has already been damaged, leaving people in the cold and in the dark for long periods of time as outdoor temperatures go below zero degrees Celsius (32 degrees Fahrenheit).
UN rights chief Volker Turk, who arrived over the weekend for a four-day visit, had to move his meetings with activists into an underground shelter as missiles rained down on Kyiv. In his nightly address, Zelensky reported that four people had died as a result of Russian airstrikes.
However, the president asserted in a video statement that “our people never give up.”
Tuesday saw a “drone attack” on an airfield in Russia’s Kursk region, according to local governor Roman Starovoyt, who did not specify where the drone came from. He posted on social media that an oil storage tank caught fire as a result of a drone attack near the Kursk airfield, adding that no one was hurt. The incident on Tuesday occurs one day after Moscow accused its neighbor of conducting lethal drone strikes on two additional airfields. Russia also acknowledged a “massive attack on Ukrainian military command systems and related defense, communications, energy, and military facilities.” —APP/AFP
