By Max Hunder
Jan 24 (Reuters) – Russia launched another vast attack on Ukraine’s power system in the early hours of Saturday, rocking Kyiv with explosions overnight and leaving 1.2 million properties without power across the country during the sub-zero winter chill.
More than 3,000 buildings in the capital were without heating on Saturday night, down from 6,000 in the morning, as temperatures hovered around -10 degrees Celsius (14 F).
Many residents’ apartments were already freezing cold due to disruptions in Kiev’s centralized heat distribution system following previous attacks.
Moscow carried out the strikes as trilateral talks, brokered by the United States between Russia and Ukraine, continued for a second day in the United Arab Emirates, then adjourned without any sign of compromise.
Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said that Russia targeted the capital and four regions in the North and East of the country.
“We are rapidly restoring damaged power generation facilities, increasing imports as much as possible, and introducing new alternative capacity,” she said.
The mayor of Kiev, Vitali Klitschko, said that one person was killed in the capital city and four were injured, three of them needed hospital, while over 30 people including a child were injured in the second city of Ukraine, Kharkiv.
Klitschko visited the worst-hit district of Kiev, the northeastern suburb of Troyeshchyna, where 600 buildings were without power, water and heat.
He said that the vulnerable residents were being given hot food and medicine, and that the city was setting up extra and heated shelters that would be operating around the clock in the area.
Kyiv recently loosened its wartime military curfew to allow people in freezing apartments to move to heated tents or public buildings at night.
Russia, which has tapped into Ukraine’s power grid since November 2022, nine months into its full-scale invasion, is carrying out its largest bombing campaign on power facilities this winter, leaving people across Ukraine with just a few hours of electricity a day and some without heat or water.
More than 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 fired 375 drones and 21 missiles, including two of its rarely deployed Tsirkon ballistic missiles, in its overnight attack.
The sky above Kiev was lit up with regular orange flashes as air defenses shot down missiles and drones descended on the capital. Loud booms echoed around the tall buildings of the city.
Tymur Tkachenko, head of the military administration of Kiev, reported strikes in at least four districts. A medical facility was among the damaged buildings.
Before Saturday, Kiev had already endured two mass overnight attacks since the New Year that knocked out power and heating to hundreds of residential buildings.
Emergency workers were still busy restoring services to residents who had been knocked out by those attacks, and Klitschko said that many of the buildings that lost heating on Saturday had only recently been restored.
In Kharkiv, a frequent target 30 km (18 miles) from the Russian border and much closer to the eastern battlefronts, Mayor Ihor Terekhov said 25 drones hit several neighborhoods.
Writing on Telegram, Terekhov said the drones hit 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)