Ukraine war: The key developments you need to know for Saturday
Russia's sustained attacks on Ukraine's energy infrastructure have interrupted supplies to as much as 40% of the country's population at the onset of winter.
Freezing temperatures are putting additional pressure on energy networks, grid operator Ukrenergo said.
“You always need to prepare for the worst. We understand that the enemy wants to destroy our power system in general, to cause long outages,” Ukrenergo’s chief executive Volodymyr Kudrytskyi told Ukrainian state television.
“We need to prepare for possible long outages, but at the moment we are introducing schedules that are planned and will do everything to ensure that the outages are not very long.”
The capital of Kyiv is already facing a “huge deficit in electricity,” Mayor Vitali Klitschko told The Associated Press. Some 1.5 million to 2 million people -- about half of the city's population -- are periodically plunged into darkness as authorities switch electricity from one district to another.
“It’s a critical situation," he said.
Klitschko added that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s military planners apparently are hoping “to bring us, everyone, to depression,” to make people feel unsafe and “to think about, ‘Maybe we give up.’” But it won't work, he said.
The power situation at critical facilities such as hospitals and schools in several areas have been stabilised, according to Ukrenergo.
Those facilities were targeted overnight in the northeastern Kharkiv region, where energy equipment was damaged, according to the local governor. Eight people including energy crews and police were injured trying to clear up the debris, he said.
Moscow’s attacks on Ukraine’s energy and power facilities have fueled fears of what the dead of winter will bring. Ukraine's energy
Read more on euronews.com
