Russian strikes force Ukraine to face hourslong power cuts
KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine’s electricity grid chief warned of hourslong power outages Friday as Russia zeroed in on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure with heavy artillery and missile attacks that have interrupted supplies to as much as 40% of the country’s people at the onset of winter.
Freezing temperatures are putting additional pressure on energy networks, grid operator Ukrenergo said.
“You always need to prepare for the worst. We understand that the enemy wants to destroy our power system in general, to cause long outages,” Ukrenergo’s chief executive Volodymyr Kudrytskyi told Ukrainian state television. “We need to prepare for possible long outages, but at the moment we are introducing schedules that are planned and will do everything to ensure that the outages are not very long.”
The capital of Kyiv is already facing a “huge deficit in electricity,” Mayor Vitali Klitschko told The Associated Press. Some 1.5 million to 2 million people — about half of the city’s population — are periodically plunged into darkness as authorities switch electricity from one district to another.
“It’s a critical situation,” he said.
Klitschko added that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s military planners apparently are hoping “to bring us, everyone, to depression,” to make people feel unsafe and “to think about, ‘Maybe we give up.’ ” But it won’t work, he said.
Kudrytskyi added that the power situation at critical facilities such as hospitals and schools has been stabilized.
Those facilities were targeted overnight in the northeastern Kharkiv region, where energy equipment was damaged, according to Gov. Oleh Syniehubov.
Moscow’s attacks on Ukraine’s energy facilities have fueled fears of what the middle of winter will bring. Ukraine’s energy infrastructure had again been targeted Thursday, two days after Russia unleashed a nationwide barrage of more than 100 missiles and drones that knocked out power to 10 million people.
Those attacks have also affected neighboring countries like Moldova, where a half-dozen cities experienced temporary blackouts.
Over 24 hours, Russian forces unleashed the breadth of their arsenal to attack Ukraine’s southeast, employing drones, rockets, heavy artillery and warplanes that killed at least six civilians and wounded six others, the president’s office said.
In the Zaporizhzhia region, the death toll from a Russian rocket attack on a residential building in the city of Vilniansk on Thursday climbed to 10 people, including three children.
In Nikopol, located across the Dnieper River from the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, 40 Russian missiles damaged several high-rise buildings, homes and a power line.
Despite the tremendous hardships across Ukraine, one hopeful sign emerged with news that the first train from Kyiv to Kherson would depart Friday night — the first in nine months.