Summary
It’s nearly 11pm in Kyiv. Here’s where things stand:
Power has been restored to nearly 6 million Ukrainians in the last 24 hours following a slew of Russian missile strikes against the country’s various infrastructure including its electricity generating systems. “Repair work continues without a break after yesterday’s terrorist attack,” Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a video address on Saturday.
Russia has claimed that the mass strikes it launched on Friday against Ukraine which led to national power and water outages were part of its prevention of foreign weapons’ delivery to Ukraine. On Friday, “military command systems, the military-industrial complex and their supporting energy facilities of Ukraine were hit with a mass strike with high-precision weapons,” Russia’s defence ministry said in its daily briefing.
The mayor of Kyiv, Vitali Klitschko, has announced that 75% of households in Kyiv had had their heat restored. In a Telegram post on Saturday, Klitschko wrote, “75% of the capital’s residents already have heat supply. Heating engineers continue working for the second day in order to stabilize the situation with heat supply in Kyiv.”
Russia has denounced a decision by Moldova to temporarily ban six television channels as “political censorship”. Moldova accused the channels of airing “incorrect information” about the country and Russia’s military operation in Ukraine. The channels are closely tied to the politician and businessman Ilan Shor, who fled the country in 2019 after the election of the pro-western president, Maia Sandu.
Moldova has reached a short-term energy deal that will help wean it off its dependence on Russian natural gas, a senior official said on Saturday. The Moldovan deputy prime minister, Andrei Spînu, said the state gas firm Moldovagaz would buy 100m cubic metres of gas from domestic supplier Energocom this month.
Power restored to almost 6 million Ukrainians
Power has been restored to nearly 6 million Ukrainians in the last 24 hours following a slew of Russian missile strikes against the country’s various infrastructure including its electricity generating systems.
“Repair work continues without a break after yesterday’s terrorist attack,” Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a video address on Saturday.
