Overnight on Wednesday, which marked 1,680 days since Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia unleashed a heavy barrage of strikes against energy infrastructure in Kyiv and other major cities. As weather forecasters predict freezing overnight temperatures in coming days, many suspect this is the beginning of a campaign to knock out Ukraine’s grid and leave people in the cold and darkness as winter approaches.
The Ukrainian people have been living in a state of full-scale war for more that four and a half years now, and the news that the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has signed off on a defence budget of 17 trillion roubles – more than £150 billion – for the next year, will hit morale even further.
