Ukraine braces for blackouts and freezing nights

Ukrainians braced for a winter with little or no power in several areas, where temperatures have already dropped below freezing, as relentless Russian strikes crippled the country’s energy capacity.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy urged people to conserve power, particularly in hard-hit areas such as Kyiv, Vinnytsia in the southwest, Sumy in the north and Odesa on the Black Sea.

Moscow’s response to military setbacks in recent weeks has included a barrage of missile strikes against power facilities, and Zelenskiy said half of the country’s power capacity had been knocked out by Russian rockets.

“The systematic damage to our energy system is so considerable that all our people and businesses should be mindful and redistribute their consumption throughout the day,” Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address. “Try to limit your personal consumption of electricity.”

Millions of Ukrainians are most likely to live with daily blackouts at least until the end of March, said Sergey Kovalenko, the head of Yasno, the energy provider.

He said workers are rushing to complete repairs.

Citizens in the recently liberated southern city of Kherson, where Kyiv says Russian troops destroyed critical infrastructure before leaving earlier this month, can apply to be relocated to areas where security and heating issues are less acute.

Battles continued to rage in the east following Russian troop movements into the industrial Donbas region from around Kherson in the south.

Moscow has been reinforcing the areas it still holds and pressing an offensive of its own along a stretch of front line west of the city of Donetsk held by its proxies since 2014. Russia and Ukraine on Monday traded blame for at least a dozen explosions at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station, which has been under Russian control since soon after it invaded the country on Feb. 24 but is across the Dnipro River from areas controlled by Kyiv.

Repeated shelling of the plant during the war has raised concern about a grave disaster in the country that suffered the 1986 Chornobyl meltdown.