Basic services were being restored in Ukraine’s capital Kyiv on Saturday after the latest wave of Russian air strikes on critical infrastructure, as residents navigated a city gripped by fog and girded for a holiday season marked by uncertainty.
Mayor Vitali Klitschko said a quarter of Kyiv remained without heating but that the metro system was back in service and all residents had been reconnected to water supply by early morning.
Only around one-third of the city remained without electricity, he said, but emergency outages would still be implemented to save power. “Because the deficit of electricity is significant,” he wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
Ukrainian officials said Russia fired more than 70 missiles on Friday in one of its heaviest barrages since the Kremlin’s February 24th invasion, forcing emergency blackouts nationwide.
Earlier this month, Mr Klitschko had warned of an “apocalypse” scenario for the capital if Russian air strikes on infrastructure continued, though he also said there was no need yet for people to evacuate.
“We are fighting and doing everything we can to make sure that this does not happen,” he said.
In a gloomy winter haze on Saturday, officials reopened a popular pedestrian bridge that had been damaged during an earlier air strike and were setting up a smaller-than-usual Christmas tree in a central square.
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The vast space in front of the centuries-old St Sophia Cathedral is traditionally anchored by a hulking evergreen at Christmas. But officials this year opted for a 12m artificial tree festooned with energy-saving lights powered by a generator.
Orthodox Christians make up the majority of Ukraine’s 43 million people.
Mr Klitschko said the tree was funded by donors and businesses, and that no public celebrations would take place.
“I doubt this will be a true holiday,” said Kyiv resident Iryna Soloychuk, who arrived with her daughter to see the tree just hours after another round of air-raid alerts wailed across the country.
“But we should understand that we’re all together, that we should help one another.”
Earlier, rescuers recovered the body of a one-and-a-half-year-old boy from the rubble of a Russian strike on a three-storey residential building in the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih in Dnipro region, the region’s governor said.
In total, four people were killed in Friday morning’s attack on Kryvyi Rih, Valentyn Reznichenko said. Thirteen others were injured by the attack, including four children.
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A Ukrainian military commander has said Russia may try to invade from the north, potentially around the anniversary of when Vladimir Putin first ordered his troops to invade Ukraine.
Maj Gen Andrii Kovalchuk warned that the fiercest fighting may yet come and called on western allies to support Ukraine with lethal weapons, including potentially cluster munitions.
In an interview with Sky News, he said he could “foresee” that Russian forces may try to invade Ukraine from the north, the east and the south, maybe even on February 24th – on the anniversary of when Russian troops invaded the country. Maj Gen Kovalchuk said: “The mass Russian strikes appeared to be a continuation of the Kremlin’s attempt to destroy Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.”
Ukraine’s state energy company Ukrenergo said energy consumption had fallen by 50 per cent as a result of the attacks. The company said Russia had hit thermal power plants, hydroelectric plants and substations of main networks.
Ukrenergo said it will take longer to repair the national grid and restore power than it did after previous Russian missile attacks, with priority given to “critical infrastructure facilities”.
Energy infrastructure was hit across the country, resulting in complete outages in Ukraine’s eastern and central regions of Kharkiv and Poltava. Nine power facilities in the country were damaged by Friday’s strikes, Ukraine’s energy minister said.
The mayor of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, said the missile strikes caused “colossal” damage to infrastructure and left the city without power, heating and water.
A senior Ukrainian presidential official said emergency power shutdowns were being brought in across the country – Agencies