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Russia has carried out a Christmas Day attack on Ukraine’s energy system, leaving greater than half 1,000,000 people without heating, water and electricity.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the attack, the thirteenth large-scale assault of 2024 on the country’s grid, was “deliberate” and never a coincidence. “What could possibly be more inhuman?” he wrote on X.
About 50 of the 70 missiles fired within the attack were intercepted, together with a “significant” portion of the greater than 100 attack drones deployed, he added.
This 12 months Ukrainians marked Christmas Day on December 25 for the second time, after switching to the western Gregorian calendar last 12 months. The choice to stop celebrating Christmas on January 7 according to the Orthodox calendar was made by Kyiv to interrupt with Russian influence.
Oleh Syniehubov, governor of Ukraine’s eastern Kharkiv region, told Ukraine’s national television news that the attack had left greater than 500,000 people without heating, water and electricity.
Temperatures across Ukraine are around freezing point.
Heating supplies were also cut in some areas of Ukraine’s Ivano-Frankivsk and Dnipropetrovsk regions, within the west and south of the country.
Ukraine’s energy grid operator, Ukrenergo, urged consumers to limit consumption by not switching on multiple appliances without delay, adding that the system was still recovering from the previous Russian attack on December 13.
Ukraine’s largest private energy company, DTEK, said that its power stations had been damaged and certainly one of its long-term employees killed.
Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andriy Sybiha, said on X that the attack reflects Russian President Vladimir Putin’s response to “those that spoke about illusionary ‘Christmas ceasefire’”.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said last week that Zelenskyy had rejected his proposal for a ceasefire and prisoner exchange on the January 7 Orthodox Christmas.
Ukraine denied that such a proposal was ever on the table, asking Hungary to “refrain from manipulations” regarding the war. On Friday, Heorhii Tykhyi, spokesperson for Ukraine’s foreign ministry, described it as “PR, a move” by Orbán.
