By Max Hunder
Jan 24 (Reuters) – Russia launched another vast attack on Ukraine’s energy system in the small hours of Saturday, rocking Kyiv with explosions throughout the night and leaving 1.2 million properties without power countrywide.
Nearly 6,000 buildings in the capital were left without heating on Saturday morning as temperatures hovered around -10 degrees Celsius (14 F). Many residents’ apartments were already freezing cold from disruption to the city’s centralised heat distribution system following previous attacks.
Moscow carried out the strikes as trilateral, U.S.-brokered talks between Russia and Ukraine continued into a second day in the UAE, with no sign of compromise on Friday.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said one person was killed in the capital city and four injured, including three being treated in hospital, while 19 people including a child were wounded in Ukraine’s second city, Kharkiv.
Russia, which has pummelled Ukraine’s power grid since its full-scale invasion in 2022, is conducting its heaviest bombardment campaign on energy facilities this winter, leaving people across Ukraine with only a few hours of power a day and some without heat or water.
Over 800,000 people in the capital and another 400,000 in the northern region of Chernihiv were without power after the latest attacks, Deputy Prime Minister Oleksiy Kuleba said.
Ukraine’s air force said Russia had unleashed 375 drones and 21 missiles, including two of its rarely deployed Tsirkon ballistic missiles, in its overnight attack.
The sky over Kyiv was lit up by regular orange flashes as air defences fired on missiles and drones descending on the capital, with loud booms echoing around the city’s tall buildings.
Tymur Tkachenko, head of Kyiv’s military administration, reported strikes in at least four districts. A medical facility was among the buildings damaged.
Before Saturday, Kyiv had already endured two mass overnight attacks since the New Year that have knocked out power and heating to hundreds of residential buildings.
Emergency workers were still engaged in restoring services to residents that had been knocked out by those attacks, and Klitschko said many of the buildings that had lost heating on Saturday had only recently had it restored.
In Kharkiv, a frequent target 30 km (18 miles) from the Russian border and much closer to eastern battlefronts, Mayor Ihor Terekhov said 25 drones had hit several districts.
Writing on Telegram, Terekhov said the drones had struck a dormitory for displaced people and two medical facilities including a maternity hospital.
(Reporting by Max Hunder and Ron Popeski; editing by Chris Reese, Tom Hogue and Mark Heinrich)
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