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About 70 percent of the Ukrainian capital was without power on Thursday morning after Moscow launched another devastating missile attack on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, the mayor of Kyiv said.
A spate of Russian attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure knocked out power across much of the country on Wednesday, bringing more damage to Ukraine’s already battered power grid and exacerbating civilian suffering as winter begins.
The strike also caused a power outage in neighboring Moldova.
Russia has been waging a devastating blow to Ukraine’s electricity infrastructure since its military suffered a battlefield setback in an all-out war it unleashed on February 24, exactly nine months ago.
“Electrical engineers are doing their best to restore (power) as quickly as possible,” Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said in a Telegraph statement, adding that water supply had been restored to about half of Kyiv on the left bank of the Dnieper River.
Ukraine’s General Staff reported Thursday morning that Russian forces fired 67 cruise missiles and 10 drones in a “massive attack on residential buildings and energy infrastructure in Kyiv and several other regions of Ukraine” on Wednesday.
Efforts are underway elsewhere in Ukraine to restore power, heat and water supplies disrupted by Wednesday’s attack.
Dmytro Lunin, governor of the Poltava region, said the “optimistic scenario” indicated that power would be restored for residents of his region of central Ukraine on Thursday.
“In the next few hours, we will start delivering power to critical infrastructure and then to most household consumers,” Mr Lunin said in a telegram, noting the presence of 15,500 people and 1,500 companies or organizations in the area. Power has been restored.
Mr Lunin added that water supply was restored in several areas of the city of Poltava and four boiler stations have started heating the district hospital.
Kirillo Tymoshenko, deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential office, said the Kirovograd and Vinnytsia regions were reconnected to the grid Thursday morning, adding to a dozen other regions that were reconnected Wednesday night.
Governor Valentyn Reznichenko said as many as 50 percent of customers in the southeastern Dnepropetrovsk region had power restored, but noted that “the energy situation is complex”.
As Russia continues to attack Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, Ukrainian authorities have begun opening up what they call “invincible points” — heated and powered spaces where people can enjoy hot meals, as well as electricity to charge devices and connect to the internet.
A total of 3,720 such spaces have been opened across the country, Tymoshenko, deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential office, said Thursday morning.
According to the project’s website, various sites have been transformed into such “invincible points”, including government buildings, schools and kindergartens, and emergency services offices.
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