Hundreds of thousands of households in Kyiv are without power after Russian strikes, as temperatures drop well below freezing

By Daria Tarasova-Markina, Lauren Kent, CNN

Kyiv, Ukraine (CNN) — An intense wave of Russian drone attacks has left hundreds of thousands of households in the Kyiv region without power, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Tuesday, as temperatures fall well below freezing.

Kyiv mayor Vitaliy Klitschko said about 500 high-rise buildings have no heating, and there is an acute shortage of electricity “even for critical infrastructure.”

Russia launched more than 300 attack drones on Ukraine overnight, as well as 18 ballistic missiles and 7 cruise missiles, Zelensky said in a social media post on Tuesday. In total, he said eight regions came under attack, including Kyiv.

“The situation in the Kyiv region is not easy – several hundred thousand households are currently without power,” Zelensky said. “Once again, the main target of the strike was our energy-generation facilities and substations.”

Russia has repeatedly targeted Ukraine’s energy infrastructure with drones and missiles since its invasion in 2022, aiming for maximum disruption to heating supplies in winter.

Tuesday’s forecast for the Ukrainian capital shows snowy weather and a high of 14 degrees Fahrenheit (-10 degrees Celsius).

Kateryna Serzhan, 36, who lives in Kyiv with her husband and 5-year-old daughter, said that on Monday her family only had electricity for an hour and a half.

“At 10pm, the lights came on for 15 minutes and haven’t been on since. The battery-powered heaters barely provide any heat,” Serzhan told CNN on a phone call. “We were prepared for the winter to be difficult, but this time, in addition to the power cuts caused by shelling, there has been a severe cold snap.”

“It’s cold at home. Both my child and I are wearing thermal underwear,” she added. “I didn’t think conditions like this would exist in the 21st century.”

Kyiv resident Halyna Prokofieva, 71, spoke to CNN as she waited for a tram that never came due to power cuts. The local transport authority said Tuesday that electricity-powered transport has been suspended in half of Kyiv.

“I haven’t had electricity or heating since yesterday,” Prokofieva said. “My daughter sent me some very warm clothes from America, but even in them I’m freezing. I’m going to work at the theater now, thinking it will be warm there. But they say there’s no heating there either.”

In addition to the attacks on energy infrastructure, four people were killed in an overnight Russian missile strike on a postal service terminal in the Kharkiv region, Zelensky said earlier.

In the Zaporizhzhia region, another Russia strike on energy facilities wounded two female employees of the regional power company, according to Ukraine’s Ministry of Energy.

Ukraine’s Commander-in-Chief, Oleksandr Syrskyi, said Tuesday that he briefed the Commanding General of the US Army for Europe and Africa, General Christopher Donahue, on the situation at the front.

The frontline “remains difficult,” Syrskyi said. “At the same time, the enemy is resorting to massive missile and air strikes against our rear areas, deliberately targeting energy facilities and using freezing temperatures as an additional instrument of pressure and terror against Ukrainians.”

The Russian Ministry of Defense said Tuesday that it carried out a massive strike “against energy infrastructure facilities used by the Ukrainian Armed Forces,” as a response to Ukrainian attacks on Russian civilian infrastructure.

Meanwhile in Russia, the governor of the Belgorod region Vyacheslav Gladkov said Tuesday that residents may have to evacuate from the area if the power supply situation deteriorates, following a Ukrainian strike on a power plant substation on Friday night that left about 600,000 people without power.

CNN’s Victoria Butenko and Anna Chernova contributed to this report.

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