Kyiv, Ukraine
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Tuesday that heavy Russian drone strikes had left hundreds of thousands of homes in the Kyiv region without power as temperatures plunged well below freezing.
Kyiv Mayor Vitaly Klitschko said around 500 high-rise buildings had no heating and there was a severe lack of electricity “even in critical infrastructure.”
President Zelenskiy said in a social media post on Tuesday that Russia launched more than 300 attack drones into Ukraine overnight, as well as 18 ballistic missiles and seven cruise missiles. He said a total of eight regions were hit, including Kiev.
“The situation in the Kyiv region is not easy. Hundreds of thousands of households are currently without power,” Zelenskiy said. “Once again, the main targets of the strike were energy generation facilities and substations.”
Since its invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia has repeatedly targeted Ukraine’s energy infrastructure with drones and missiles, aiming to cause maximum disruption to winter heating supplies.
Tuesday’s weather forecast for the Ukrainian capital calls for snow and a high of 14 degrees Fahrenheit (-10 degrees Celsius).
Katerina Sergean, 36, who lives in Kiev with her husband and five-year-old daughter, said her family had electricity for only an hour and a half on Monday.
“The lights were on for 15 minutes at 10 p.m. and haven’t been on since then. The battery-powered heaters are providing very little heat,” Serzan told CNN by phone. “We were prepared for a harsh winter, but this time we were hit by a severe cold wave, in addition to power outages due to shelling.”
“It’s cold inside the house. Both my child and I are wearing warm underwear,” she added. “I never thought a situation like this would exist in the 21st century.”
Kyiv resident Halina Prokofieva, 71, told CNN as she waited for a tram that didn’t come due to a power outage. Local transport authorities announced on Tuesday that electricity transport was suspended in half of Kiev.
“I haven’t used electricity or heating since yesterday,” Prokofieva said. “My daughter sent me some very warm clothes from America, but I’m still cold even in those clothes.I’m going to work at a theater, and I’m thinking it’ll be warm there.But I’m told there’s no heating there either.”
Zelenskyy earlier said that in addition to attacks on energy infrastructure, four people were killed in a Russian nighttime missile attack on a post office terminal in the Kharkiv region.
According to Ukraine’s Ministry of Energy, there was another Russian attack on an energy facility in the Zaporizhzhya region, injuring two female employees of the regional power company.
Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Shirsky said on Tuesday that he had briefed Christopher Donahue, commander of the U.S. European and African Command, about the situation on the front lines.
The front line “remains in a difficult situation,” Silsky said. “At the same time, the enemy is resorting to large-scale missile and air strikes against our country’s rear regions, deliberately targeting energy facilities and using subzero temperatures as a further means of pressure and terror against the Ukrainian people.”
Russia’s Ministry of Defense announced on Tuesday that it had carried out a large-scale attack “on energy infrastructure facilities used by the Ukrainian military” in response to Ukrainian attacks on Russian civilian infrastructure.
Meanwhile, in Russia, Belgorod governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said on Tuesday that residents may have to evacuate the region if the power supply situation worsens, after a Ukrainian attack on a power plant substation on Friday night left some 600,000 people without power.
CNN’s Victoria Butenko and Anna Chernova contributed to this report.
