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Russia has carried out a Christmas Day assault on Ukraine’s vitality system, leaving greater than half 1,000,000 folks with out heating, water and electrical energy.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy mentioned the assault, the thirteenth large-scale assault of 2024 on the nation’s grid, was “deliberate” and never a coincidence. “What may very well be extra inhuman?” he wrote on X.
About 50 of the 70 missiles fired within the assault had been intercepted, together with a “vital” portion of the greater than 100 assault drones deployed, he added.
This yr Ukrainians marked Christmas Day on December 25 for the second time, after switching to the western Gregorian calendar final yr. The choice to cease celebrating Christmas on January 7 in step with the Orthodox calendar was made by Kyiv to interrupt with Russian affect.
Oleh Syniehubov, governor of Ukraine’s jap Kharkiv area, instructed Ukraine’s nationwide tv information that the assault had left greater than 500,000 folks with out heating, water and electrical energy.
Temperatures throughout Ukraine are round freezing level.
Heating provides had been additionally reduce in some areas of Ukraine’s Ivano-Frankivsk and Dnipropetrovsk areas, within the west and south of the nation.
Ukraine’s vitality grid operator, Ukrenergo, urged customers to restrict consumption by not switching on a number of home equipment directly, including that the system was nonetheless recovering from the earlier Russian assault on December 13.
Ukraine’s largest non-public vitality firm, DTEK, mentioned that its energy stations had been broken and one in all its long-term workers killed.
Ukraine’s overseas minister, Andriy Sybiha, mentioned on X that the assault displays Russian President Vladimir Putin’s response to “those that spoke about illusionary ‘Christmas ceasefire’”.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán mentioned final week that Zelenskyy had rejected his proposal for a ceasefire and prisoner change on the January 7 Orthodox Christmas.
Ukraine denied that such a proposal was ever on the desk, asking Hungary to “chorus from manipulations” relating to the warfare. On Friday, Heorhii Tykhyi, spokesperson for Ukraine’s overseas ministry, described it as “PR, a transfer” by Orbán.
