Ukrainian capital Kyiv plunges into darkness

Kyiv, November 24

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About 70 per cent of the Ukrainian capital was left without power, Kyiv’s mayor said on Thursday, a day after Moscow unleashed yet another devastating missile and drone barrage on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.

Work on to restore power supply

Engineers are doing their best to get power back as soon as possible. The water supply has been restored in about half of Kyiv on the left bank of the Dnipro river. — Vitali Klitschko, Kyiv Mayor

Ukraine’s energy minister Herman Haluschenko said three out of four nuclear power stations that are fully functioning and which had been forced offline by Wednesday’s strikes were subsequently reconnected to the grid.

“In the next few hours, we will start supplying energy to critical infrastructure, and then to the majority of household consumers,” Lunin said on Telegram, noting that power has already been restored for 15,500 people and 1,500 legal entities in the region.

Wednesday’s renewed Russian attack on Ukrainian infrastructure caused power outages across large parts of the country, further hobbling Ukraine’s already battered power network and adding to the misery for civilians as temperatures plunge.

Ukraine’s General Staff reported on Thursday morning that Russian forces fired 67 cruise missiles and 10 drones during Wednesday’s “massive attack on residential buildings and energy infrastructure” in Kyiv and several other regions in Ukraine.

Governor of the Poltava region Dmytro Lunin said “an optimistic scenario” suggested that electricity will come back to residents of his central Ukrainian region on Thursday.

Lunin added that water supplies resumed in several parts of the city of Poltava, and four boiler stations have started to heat regional hospitals across the country.

In the Dnipropetrovsk region, power has been restored for up to 50 per cent of consumers, Gov Valentyn Reznichenko said, but noted that “the power situation is complicated.” — AP