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At least one million people without power in Ukraine after ‘massive’ Russian attack

At least one million people are without power in Ukraine after Russia staged a “massive” attack on the country’s energy infrastructure in the early hours of Thursday. The missile strikes come as temperatures have dropped to freezing, and a UN official has warned that as Russia continues to target Ukraine’s power grid, this winter could become the “harshest since the start of the war”.

Ukrainian rescuers extinguish a fire at an energy infrastructure facility following a missile attack in Lutsk on November 28, 2024. © AFP handout photo, Ukrainian emergency services

Ukrainian rescuers extinguish a fire at an energy infrastructure facility following a missile attack in Lutsk on November 28, 2024. © AFP handout photo, Ukrainian emergency services

“Once again, the energy sector is under massive enemy attack. Attacks on energy facilities are taking place across Ukraine,” Energy Minister German Galushchenko said in a Facebook post.

National power grid operator Ukrenergo had “urgently introduced emergency power cuts”, he added, as temperatures across the country dropped to around 0 degrees Celsius (32 degrees Fahrenheit).

 

 

 

In western Ukraine alone, more than one million people were without power on Thursday morning.

“As of now, 523,000 subscribers in Lviv region are without electricity,” regional head Maksym Kozytskyi said on social media, while authorities said 280,000 were cut off in the western Rivne region and another 215,000 in the Volyn region.

A senior UN official, Rosemary DiCarlo, this month denounced the rise in civilian casualties in the nearly three-year conflict between Ukraine and Russia, noting Moscow’s targeting of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure may make this winter the “harshest since the start of the war”.

Energy provider DTEK said Ukrenergo was introducing emergency power outages in the regions of KyivOdesa, Dnipro and Donetsk.

Ukraine’s military said earlier Thursday that an air raid alert had been declared across the country “due to a missile threat” in a message on Telegram.

Missiles were detected headed for Kharkiv, Odesa and eight other regions, according to other messages from the air force.

“Kharkiv, go to the shelters!” it warned.

Oleg Synegubov, head of the Kharkiv region military administration, said on Telegram that three strikes had hit Kharkiv’s Kyivskyi district, with no casualties reported so far.

The mayor of Lutsk in northwestern Ukraine, Igor Polishchuk, said that “explosions were heard again” in the city.

Trump’s envoy

The latest missile salvo comes a day after US president-elect Donald Trump named staunch loyalist and retired general Keith Kellogg as his Ukraine envoy, charged with ending the Russian invasion.

Trump campaigned on a platform of securing a swift end to the Ukraine war, boasting that he would quickly mediate a ceasefire deal between President Volodymyr Zelensky and Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

But his critics have warned that the incoming Republican will likely leverage US military aid to pressure Kyiv into an agreement that leaves it ceding occupied territory permanently or agreeing not to join NATO.

A fixture on the cable news circuit, 80-year-old national security veteran Kellogg co-authored a paper this year calling for Washington to leverage military aid as a means of pushing for peace talks.

Ukraine has received almost $60 billion from Washington for its armed forces since Russia launched a full-scale invasion in February 2022, but with the more isolationist Trump taking over the White House, supporters fear the spigot will run dry.

“The United States would continue to arm Ukraine and strengthen its defenses to ensure Russia will make no further advances and will not attack again after a cease-fire or peace agreement,” Kellogg’s research paper for the Trumpist America First Policy Institute think tank said.

“Future American military aid, however, will require Ukraine to participate in peace talks with Russia.”

Troop shortages

Kellogg told Voice of America at the Republican convention in July that Ukraine’s options were “quite clear".

“If Ukraine doesn’t want to negotiate, fine, but then accept the fact that you can have enormous losses in your cities and accept the fact that you will have your children killed, accept the fact that you don’t have 130,000 dead, you will have 230,000-250,000,” he said.

Trump’s announcement came as the outgoing administration of Democrat Joe Biden was hosting a news conference to urge Ukraine to enlist more recruits by reducing the minimum age of conscription to 18 – in line with the US benchmark.

Facing a much larger enemy with more advanced weapons and with stocks of volunteers dwindling, Ukraine is facing an “existential” recruitment crunch, a senior administration official told reporters.

“The simple truth is that Ukraine is not currently mobilising or training enough soldiers to replace their battlefield losses while keeping pace with Russia’s growing military,” said the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

He added that an additional 160,000 troops would be “on the low end” to fill out Ukraine’s ranks – but “a good start".

National Security Council spokesman John Kirby later clarified that the White House would not make the huge flow of US military aid to Kyiv dependent on a conscription age change.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)

Author: Editors Desk

Source: France 24

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