Russian forces’ latest missile barrage across Ukraine left many cities without power and in the cold as they continue to pound Ukraine’s critical infrastructure.
Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to the Head of the Office of President of Ukraine, said on Wednesday, “A new massive attack on [Ukrainian] infrastructure facilities is underway.”
RUSSIA TARGETS UKRAINIAN INFRASTRUCTURE AHEAD OF LONG, HARD WINTER
Wednesday’s aerial assault was widespread, with Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovyi saying his “whole city is without electricity,” while the regional state administration’s Maksym Marchenko said, “There is temporarily no electricity supply in Odessa region and other regions in Ukraine.”
At least three people were killed and nine others injured when a missile strike hit a building in the capital city, Kyiv.
“Today Russia again carried out a mass shelling of Ukrainian energy infrastructure. This is a civilian infrastructure that provides electricity and heating for millions of Ukrainian women, children and pensioners,” Ukraine’s Ministry of Energy said in a Facebook post. “As a result, the vast majority of electricity consumers across the country has been disrupted. There are some emergency outages happening. The lack of electricity can affect the availability of heat and water supply. The power workers are already working and doing their best to restore power as soon as possible. But the scale of the impact, it will take time.”
Moldovan Foreign Affairs Minister Nick Popescu wrote on Twitter that Russia’s attacks left “massive blackouts across the country” and noted it happened “again.” Moldovan Infrastructure Minister Andrei Spinu said on Twitter that more than half the country had lost power.
Russian forces this fall have engaged in an aerial assault against Ukraine, targeting their critical infrastructure. Russian officials have maintained that these are legitimate military targets, but the Ukrainians and much of the Western world disagree in light of the millions of Ukrainian civilians whose lives have been plunged into chaos without consistent electricity as winter commences. They’ve already had their first snow of the season.
“As Russia struggles on the battlefield, it is increasingly turning to horrific attacks against the Ukrainian people with punishing strikes damaging energy grid infrastructure, and deliberately doing so as winter approaches. These strikes do not appear aimed at any military purpose and instead further the goal of the Putin regime to increase the suffering and death of Ukrainian men, women and children,” National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson said in a statement. “It also shows Russia is willing to increase the risk of a nuclear safety incident that could not only further harm Ukraine, but affect the entire region as well. The United States and our allies and partners will continue to provide Ukraine with what it needs to defend itself including air defense.”
Hans Kluge, regional director for the World Health Organization, said, “This winter will be about survival,” according to the Washington Post, and the winter could be “life-threatening for millions of Ukrainians.”
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Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley called Russia’s campaign against Ukraine’s electrical grid a “war crime.” Beth Van Schaack, U.S. ambassador-at-large for global criminal justice, told reporters on Monday that it’s difficult to determine whether specific strikes constitute war crimes because “each individual strike has to be evaluated as against whether there were military objectives in the vicinity, or whether these were purely civilian objects,” but she added, “There is a consistent pattern of attacks on civilian elements.”
