A heavy wave of Russian drone and missile attacks has left hundreds of thousands of households across the Kyiv region without electricity, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Tuesday, as temperatures plunged far below freezing.
Kyiv Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko said roughly 500 high-rise buildings in the capital are without heating, warning of an acute shortage of electricity “even for critical infrastructure.”
According to Zelensky, Russia launched more than 300 attack drones overnight, along with 18 ballistic missiles and seven cruise missiles. Eight regions across Ukraine were targeted, including Kyiv.
“The situation in the Kyiv region is not easy – several hundred thousand households are currently without power,” Zelensky said in a social media post. “Once again, the main target of the strike was our energy-generation facilities and substations.”
Since the start of its full-scale invasion in 2022, Russia has repeatedly attacked Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, particularly during winter months, in an effort to disrupt heating and electricity supplies.
Weather forecasts for Kyiv on Tuesday predicted snowy conditions and a high of just 14 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 10 degrees Celsius).
For many residents, the outages have made daily life increasingly difficult. Kateryna Serzhan, 36, who lives in Kyiv with her husband and five-year-old daughter, said her family had electricity for only about an hour and a half on Monday.
“At 10 p.m., the lights came on for 15 minutes and haven’t been on since. The battery-powered heaters barely provide any heat,” Serzhan told CNN by phone. “We were prepared for the winter to be difficult, but this time, in addition to the power cuts caused by shelling, there has been a severe cold snap.”
“It’s cold at home. Both my child and I are wearing thermal underwear,” she added. “I didn’t think conditions like this would exist in the 21st century.”
Another Kyiv resident, 71-year-old Halyna Prokofieva, spoke to CNN while waiting for a tram that never arrived because of power outages. Kyiv’s transport authority said Tuesday that electricity-powered transport has been suspended in about half of the city.
“I haven’t had electricity or heating since yesterday,” Prokofieva said. “My daughter sent me some very warm clothes from America, but even in them I’m freezing. I’m going to work at the theater now, thinking it will be warm there. But they say there’s no heating there either.”
Beyond the capital, Russian strikes also caused deadly damage elsewhere. Zelensky said four people were killed overnight when a Russian missile hit a postal service terminal in the Kharkiv region. In the Zaporizhzhia region, another strike on energy facilities wounded two female employees of the regional power company, according to Ukraine’s Ministry of Energy.
Ukraine’s Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said Tuesday that he briefed US Army Europe and Africa Commanding General Christopher Donahue on conditions along the front lines.
“The frontline remains difficult,” Syrskyi said. “At the same time, the enemy is resorting to massive missile and air strikes against our rear areas, deliberately targeting energy facilities and using freezing temperatures as an additional instrument of pressure and terror against Ukrainians.”
Russia’s Ministry of Defense said Tuesday that it carried out a large-scale strike on energy infrastructure “used by the Ukrainian Armed Forces,” describing the attacks as retaliation for Ukrainian strikes on Russian civilian infrastructure.
Meanwhile, in Russia’s Belgorod region, Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said residents could be forced to evacuate if the power situation worsens. A Ukrainian strike on a power plant substation on Friday night left around 600,000 people in the region without electricity, he said.
