Ukraine’s president says six million Ukrainian households are still without power after major missile attacks hit the country this week.
“As of this evening, a blackout continues in most regions and in Kyiv,” Vladimir Zelensky said in his nightly address.
He added that since Wednesday, the number of affected households has halved.
But as winter sets in, millions of people are left without electricity, water or heat.
In a video address, President Zelenskiy said that the capital and its surrounding areas were the most affected by the attacks. Many of the city’s residents “have been without power for 20 or 30 hours,” he said.
Other worst-affected regions are Odesa region in the south, Lviv in the west, as well as Vinnytsia and Dnipropetrovsk, which are more central, he said.
President Zielinski urged everyone to use appliances that use less energy: “If you don’t have a power outage, that doesn’t mean the problem is over. Please, if “You have electricity, so that doesn’t mean you can turn on. Many powerful electrical appliances at once.”
“We will have to endure this winter, a winter that everyone will remember,” he said.
Prime Minister Denis Schmeichel said that despite the attacks, almost all of the country’s critical infrastructure had been reconnected – including things like water facilities, heat-generating plants, hospitals and emergency services.
But ordinary people face scheduled power cuts in every region of Ukraine, he said.
There are fears that Russia’s targeting of Ukraine’s infrastructure, combined with snow and sub-zero temperatures, could create a health crisis in the country.
Ukraine and its Western allies have repeatedly said Russia is committing war crimes by targeting critical civilian infrastructure – a charge Moscow denies.
On Friday, the regional governor of Kherson said hospital patients had been evacuated from the area due to “continuous Russian shelling”.
City council officials said 15 residents were killed this week in the eastern city – which was recently retaken by Ukrainian forces.
The Russian airstrike came as the UN nuclear agency said three nuclear plants on Ukrainian soil had been reconnected to the grid, after they were forced to shut down during attacks this week.
A fourth nuclear plant in the Russian-controlled region of Zaporizhzhia came back online on Thursday.
