Deadly raids plunge most of Ukraine into darkness
Moscow condemned for state terrorism as missile blitz on power grid aims to make civilians suffer
A FRESH barrage of deadly Russian missile strikes against Ukraine’s beleaguered power network yesterday left most of the country without electricity, as well as about half of the neighbouring country of Moldova.
A 17-year-old girl was among three killed and 10 wounded in the strikes, which came as the European Parliament voted to declare Russia a state sponsor of terrorism.
While most of the missiles targeted power grids they also hit a major crossroads in Kyiv and bodies were seen lying in the light snow in the suburbs of the Ukrainian capital.
Hours earlier, rockets had flattened a maternity ward, killing a two-day-old baby, in Vilniansk, near Zaporizhzhia.
Ukraine’s first lady, Olena Zelenska, said: “Horrible pain. We will never forget and never forgive.” Her husband Volodymyr Zelensky, vowed to rebuild his country’s infrastructure and praised the spirit of his people after the attacks. “We’ll renew everything and get through all of this because we are an unbreakable people,” he said.
Vladimir Putin has been accused of war crimes in trying to destroy Ukraine’s energy network in the hope a long, bitter winter breaks the nation’s morale and forces it into negotiations.
Weeks of relentless pounding of the national grid and other key infrastructure with missiles and drones have put intense pressure on the system.
Strikes had already damaged around half of Ukraine’s infrastructure before the latest attack, and the country is facing rolling blackouts.
Vitali Klitschko, the mayor of Kyiv, said the latest missiles had hit “one of the capital’s infrastructure facilities”.
Yesterday’s blackouts forced Ukraine’s last three fully functioning nuclear power plants to disconnect from the grid. The state-run nuclear energy firm, Energoatom, said emergency protection was activated at the Rivne, Pivdennoukrainsk and Khmelnytskyi plants.
Moldova also condemned Moscow after the barrage triggered massive blackouts in its own grid, which has remained entwined with Ukraine’s network since the Soviet era.
Engineers were attempting to reconnect “more than 50 per cent of the country”, the government said.
Moscow was also accused of blackmail after the state-run Russian company, Gazprom, threatened to reduce gas flows to Moldova via Ukraine.
Gazprom accuses Ukraine of withholding supplies destined for Moldova, which Kyiv denies. “Gas blackmail is an established Russian practice that the Kremlin continues to use for geopolitical purposes,” German Galushchenko, Ukraine’s energy minister, said.
Meanwhile, the European Parliament voted to designate Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism because of its continued strikes against civilian targets.
The move was largely symbolic but it drew an angry reaction from the Kremlin. Hours later, the parliament reported that its website had come under cyber attack from pro-russian hackers.
The United States has authorised another $400million (£332m) of weapons, munitions and air defence equipment for Ukraine, Antony Blinken, its Secretary of State, said. President Joe
Biden has so far provided $19.7billion (£16.3bn) in military aid to Ukraine.
The latest package includes 200 generators as well as additional rounds for the advanced NASAMS air defence systems and the HIMARS artillery systems that the US shipped to Ukraine, and 150 heavy machine guns with thermal sights to shoot down drones.
“With Russia’s unrelenting missile and [drone] attacks on Ukrainian critical energy infrastructure, additional air defence capabilities remain an urgent priority,” the Pentagon said.
“The additional munitions for NASAMS and heavy machine guns will help Ukraine counter these urgent threats.”