KYIV/BUCHAREST: The United States will announce new aid on Tuesday to help restore power to Ukraine as its people face another week of bitter cold and darkness after Russian missile attacks hit its power grid.
Russia has targeted Ukraine’s power plants, transmission and distribution facilities and water pumping stations since early October, each barrage having more impact than the last as damage accumulates and winter sets in.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said he expects new attacks that could be as bad as last week’s bombing, which left millions without heat, water or electricity.
A senior State Department official told reporters on condition of anonymity that US Secretary of State Anthony Blanken, who arrived in Bucharest on Tuesday morning, announced new aid to help Ukraine restore its electricity transmission capacity. Will announce.
Washington is working with U.S. utilities and hardware suppliers and European countries to find equipment that can restore Ukraine’s high-voltage transmission stations, the official said.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Koliba told a meeting of seven Nordic and Baltic foreign ministers that his country needs transformers and better air defense.
Kyiv and its allies say Russia’s attacks on civilian infrastructure are war crimes. Moscow denies that it intends to harm civilians but said last week that unless Ukraine accedes to Russia’s demands, their suffering will not end without spelling them out.
In Kyiv, snow fell and temperatures hovered around freezing as millions of people in and around the capital struggled to heat their homes.
Christmas trees, minus the lights, will be put up in the devastated city in a defiant display of holiday spirit, officials said.
“We cannot allow Putin to steal our Christmas,” Mayor Vitaly Klitschko told in an interview.
Ukrainian energy company Naftogaz has asked the United States Agency for International Development to help with additional volumes of natural gas for the summer season, the company’s chief executive said.
Near the top?
DTEK, Ukraine’s largest private power producer, said it would cut power to its customers in Kyiv by 60 percent.
National grid operator Ukrainergo said on Monday it had been forced to resume regular emergency blackouts across the country.
Near the front line in the eastern town of Siversk, Viktor and Ludmila Syabro, 68 and 61 respectively, said they had been living underground since the electricity was cut off in April as Russian attacks tore through their hometown.
Without running water or gas, the couple hopes to install a wood-burning stove to make life underground in the winter more bearable.
In the city of Kherson, which has lacked electricity and heat since being abandoned by Russian forces earlier this month, regional governor Yaroslav Yanushevich said 24% of customers now had power, including partial power in the city center.
New Stage
With the frontlines in eastern Ukraine, the onset of winter is ushering in a new phase of the conflict, followed by months of Russian retreat, with intense trench warfare along heavily fortified positions.
With Russian forces retreating northeast and across the Dnipro River to the south, the front line is about half the length it was a few months ago, making it difficult for Ukrainian forces to find vulnerable defenses Is Progress
The General Staff of Ukraine’s armed forces said late Monday that Russian forces were shelling towns on the west bank of the Dnipro River, including Kherson, which Moscow abandoned earlier this month.
Ukraine’s military said Russia continued heavy shelling of Bakhmut and Ivodka, key targets in Donetsk province, and bombarded areas around the northern towns of Kopyansk and Leman, both recently recaptured by Kyiv. The Ukrainian army said.
Ukrainian forces damaged a rail bridge north of the Russian-held southern city of Melitopol that was key to supplying Russian forces dug in there.
JEE News could not independently verify the battlefield reports.
Russia launched its “special military operation” on February 24 to demilitarize its neighbor and protect Russian speakers. Ukraine and Western nations have rejected it as a baseless pretext for the attack.
The Pentagon is considering a proposal from Boeing to supply Ukraine with cheap, small precision bombs mounted on abundantly available rockets, which would allow Kyiv to strike far behind Russian lines as the West moves further. Struggling to keep up with the demand for weapons.
