KYIV (Reuters) – Electricity was gradually restored to many cities across Ukraine on Thursday, including the capital Kyiv, a day after heavy Russian bombardment of the country’s energy infrastructure.
As the conflict sparked by the Russian invasion of Ukraine enters its 10th month on Thursday and winter cold has descended on the country, a quarter of housing remains without electricity in Kyiv but the water Power has returned to some neighborhoods and will be restored elsewhere later in the day, regional authorities said.
In a tangible sign of an improvement from the day before, when authorities said power was cut across the Kyiv region, public transport was operating in the capital on Thursday, with buses replacing trams to save electricity .
“Let’s persevere, despite everything,” the Kyiv region’s military administration said in a statement.
Kyiv was one of the main targets of a salvo of missiles fired on Wednesday by Russia against Ukrainian energy infrastructure, which caused power cuts in many regions.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said again in his daily telephone press briefing on Thursday that Russia only hits militarily relevant targets, leaving out “social” targets. .
Ukraine’s Energy Minister German Galushchenko said three nuclear power plants that were disconnected from the grid due to the attacks are expected to be reconnected later today, which should ease strains on Ukraine’s electricity supply. whole country.
“The situation is difficult throughout the country,” he said in a televised statement, adding that the national power grid was “reunified” again after the damage caused by the Russian strikes and that production should gradually increase in the day.
The temperature fell below zero degrees Celsius overnight in Kyiv, whose streets are covered in frost. A sign that winter is now well established in the capital, which had 2.8 million inhabitants before the war, snow has already fallen there in recent days.
PARIS DENOUNCES “WAR CRIMES”
Its mayor, Vitali Klitschko, said workers were doing all they could to restore power “as quickly as possible” but that much would depend on the overall “balance” of the national grid.
Kirilo Tymoshenko, deputy chief of staff to President Volodimir Zelensky, said power had been restored to Kirovohrad and Vinnytsia regions.
Electricity has also returned to the Sumy region in northern Ukraine, and 3,000 miners who were trapped underground during a power outage have been brought to the surface in the center of the country, officials said. regional managers.
Beyond the power cuts affecting the Ukrainian population, the interruption of power to nuclear power plants following the Russian strikes posed “a real risk of nuclear and radioactive disaster”, warned Petro Kotin, the president of the Ukrainian public energy company Energoatom.
After these attacks, all of the country’s nuclear reactors found themselves disconnected from the network at the same time for the first time in 40 years, he said in a statement.
Even when they are shut down, nuclear reactors must be supplied with electricity in order to allow the operation of the cooling and safety systems.
When they are no longer supplied by the general network, the Ukrainian power stations have recourse to emergency generators.
In Paris, the spokeswoman for the Quai d’Orsay denounced these bombardments not pursuing any military target, which “obviously constitute war crimes”.
“This systematic targeting of the population at the approach of winter reflects a clear Russian desire to make the Ukrainian people suffer, to deprive them of water, heating and electricity to undermine their resilience”, notes the spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in a statement sent to the press.
(Report Tom Balmforth and Pavel Polityuk; French version Bertrand Boucey and Myriam Rivet, edited by Blandine Hénault and Sophie Louet)