A woman walks in the Kherson region
(Picture: AFP via Getty Images)Four and a half million Ukrainians have been left without power following Russian attacks on its energy network as President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Putin of “energy terrorism”.
Mr Zelensky, in his nightly address, also said “the very fact that Russia is resorting to energy terrorism shows the weakness of our enemy”.
The attacks on Ukrainian power and water supplies come as winter approaches.
Temperatures can fall far below freezing in winter, now just weeks away.
“They cannot beat Ukraine on the battlefield, so they try to break our people this way,” Mr Zelenksy said. “Tonight, about 4.5 million consumers have been temporarily disconnected from energy consumption.”
Moscow has openly declared its intention to target the country’s energy infrastructure and drive the nation into the cold.
“When you’re relying on electricity, the worst thing is that you can’t plan … Psychologically it’s very uncomfortable,” said Vedmid, a 44-year-old business owner in Bilohorodka. The cuts are getting longer — nearly 12 hours of outages a day, he said.
So far, Russia has destroyed about 40 per cent of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, affecting 16 regions, according to the Ukrainian government.
The latest assault came on Monday, when a massive barrage of Russian cruise missile and drone strikes hit Kyiv, Kharkiv and other cities, knocking out water and power supplies in apparent retaliation for what Moscow alleged was a Ukrainian attack on its Black Sea fleet.
In Kyiv, some 80 per cent of consumers in the city of 3 million were left without water because of damage to a power facility.
The unpredictable rolling blackouts are increasing as the government scrambles to stabilise the energy grid and repair the system ahead of winter. The cuts add another layer of angst and uncertainty to a population already struggling with the stress of nearly nine months of war.
To try to ease people’s burdens, energy companies are publishing daily schedules of when neighbourhoods won’t have power.
It came as Russia says the world’s five nuclear powers are “on brink of armed conflict” while accusing the West of “encouraging provocations”.
The Russian Foreign Ministry claimed in a statement on Wednesday that avoiding a nuclear clash was its first priority.
Western capitals have said Moscow is behind a ramping up of nuclear rhetoric following its invasion of Ukraine in February - most recently by repeatedly accusing Kyiv of planning to use a radioactive “dirty bomb” without offering evidence. Kyiv has denied having any such plan.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday it feared the five declared nuclear powers were teetering “on the brink of a direct armed conflict” and that the West must stop “encouraging provocations with weapons of mass destruction, which can lead to catastrophic consequences”.
“We are strongly convinced that in the current complicated and turbulent situation, caused by irresponsible and impudent actions aimed at undermining our national security, the most immediate task is to avoid any military clash of nuclear powers,” the ministry said in a statement.
