Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is calling for the United Nations to punish Russia for airstrikes on civilian infrastructure, after a missile barrage plunged cities into freezing darkness.
With temperatures below 0 degrees Celsius, authorities were working Thursday to get the lights and heat back on.
Russia’s latest missile attacks killed 10 people and shut down all of Ukraine’s nuclear power plants for the first time in 40 years.
Kyiv regional authorities said electricity had been restored to three-quarters of the capital by Thursday morning and water was back on in some areas.
Transport returned to work in the city, with buses replacing electric trams.
Authorities expected to restart all three nuclear power plants in Ukrainian-controlled territory later in the day.
Since early October, Russia has launched major attacks about once a week on Ukrainian energy targets, each time firing missiles worth hundreds of millions of dollars to knock out Ukraine’s power grid.
Moscow acknowledges attacking basic infrastructure, saying its aim is to reduce Ukraine’s fighting capacity and push it to negotiate.
Kyiv says the attacks are clearly intended to harm civilians, making them a war crime.
“Today is just one day, but we received 70 missiles. This is the Russian formula for terror,” Zelenskyy told the UN Security Council chamber by video link overnight.
“All of this goes against our energy infrastructure.
Ukraine says Russia’s recent attacks on infrastructure are clearly intended to harm civilians. (AP: Efrem Lukatsky)
“Hospitals, schools, transportation, residential neighborhoods all suffered.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov blamed Kyiv for the Ukrainians’ suffering, saying it had refused to give in to Moscow’s demands, which he did not elaborate on.
Ukraine says it will stop fighting only when all Russian forces have left.
“What is there to talk about? I think the first step should come from them,” said Olena Shafinska, 27, as she stood in line at a water pump in a park in central Kyiv.
“For starters, they need to stop bombing us.”
Residents of Kyiv line up to fill water bottles as local authorities work to restore water infrastructure. (Reuters: Valentyn Ogirenko)
For the first time, the Russian attacks forced Kyiv to shut down the three nuclear power plants it still controls. The fourth, in territory controlled by Russia, also had to activate reserve diesel power.
Nuclear officials say power outages could disrupt cooling systems and lead to a nuclear disaster.
“There is a real danger of a nuclear and radiation catastrophe from firing across the territory of Ukraine with Russian cruise and ballistic missiles,” said Petro Kotin, head of Ukraine’s nuclear operator Energoatom.
“Russia must answer for this shameful crime.”
Residents of Kyiv charge their devices, connect to the Internet and warm up inside the invincibility centers. (Reuters: Valentyn Ogirenko)
US says Putin is ‘weaponizing winter’
Winter has suddenly arrived in Ukraine and temperatures have dropped well below freezing in the capital, a city of 3 million people.
US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield said Russian President Vladimir Putin “is clearly weaponizing the winter to inflict immense suffering on the Ukrainian people”.
The Russian president “will try to freeze the country into submission,” he said.
There was no prospect of action by the UN Security Council, where Russia has a veto.
Moscow’s ambassador to the UN, Vasily Nebenzya, said it was against the council’s rules for Zelenskyy to appear by video and rejected what he called “reckless threats and ultimatums” from Ukraine and its supporters in the west
He blamed damage to Ukrainian infrastructure on Ukrainian air defense missiles and said the West should stop supplying them.
Residents of the city of Vyshhorod, near Kyiv, stand near their residential building destroyed by recent Russian missile attacks. (Reuters: Gleb Garanich)
Ukrainian authorities said Wednesday that three apartment blocks were hit, killing 10 people.
“Our little girl was sleeping. Two years old. She was sleeping, she covered herself,” said a man who gave his name as Fyodr, dragging a suitcase as he walked away from a smoldering apartment building in Kyiv .
“She’s alive, thank God.”
Also in the capital, performers and staff members of Kyiv’s National Academic Operetta Theater bid a tearful farewell to 26-year-old ballet dancer Vadym Khlupianets, who died fighting Russian troops east of Ukraine
Read more about the Russian invasion of Ukraine:
Winter to test the two sides in the war
The first winter of the war will test whether Ukraine can continue its campaign to reclaim territory and whether Russia’s commanders can keep their invasion forces supplied and find a way to halt Kyiv’s push.
Having withdrawn, Russia has a much shorter line to defend to hold on to the occupied lands, with more than a third of the front blocked by the Dnipro River.
“Ukraine will slowly grow in capabilities, but continued maneuvering east of the Dnipro River and in the Russian-occupied Donbas will prove to be much tougher fights,” Mark Hertling, former commander of US ground forces in Europe, wrote in Twitter.
“Ukraine’s morale will be tested by continued Russian attacks on civilian infrastructure … but Ukraine will persevere.”
Russia has been pressing an offensive of its own along the front line west of the city of Donetsk, held by Moscow’s proxies since 2014.
Ukraine’s general staff said Russian forces had again tried to advance on their main targets, Bakhmut and Avdiivka, with limited success.
Further south, Russian forces were digging into the eastern bank of the Dnipro, shelling areas across it, including the city of Kherson, recaptured by Ukrainian forces this month.
Reuters could not immediately verify accounts from the battlefield.
Moscow says it is conducting a “special military operation” to protect Russian speakers in what Putin calls an artificial state cut off from Russia.
Ukraine and the West call the invasion an unprovoked war of aggression.
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Reuters