Millions of Kyiv residents face cold winter with no power or heat, mayor says

Residents of Kyiv should brace for a freezing cold winter without heat, electricity or water, the city’s mayor warned over the weekend as Russia waged devastating attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.

Rotating and emergency blackouts were planned in the capital city of three million people Sunday in response to the Russian military’s month-long attacks focused on power plants, water supplies and other targets critical to everyday life.

The onslaught has caused shortages and rolling outages nationwide.

“We are doing everything to avoid this. But let’s be frank, our enemies are doing everything for the city to be without heat, without electricity, without water supply, in general, so we all die,” Mayor Vitali Klitschko told state media.

“The future of the country and the future of each of us depends on how prepared we are for different situations,” he added.

Russian forces have been using missiles and drones in the intense assaults on infrastructure and on Ukrainian cities and villages.

Despite the onslaught, the crucial Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant was reconnected to Ukraine’s power grid, local media reported Sunday.

The site, Europe’s largest nuclear plant, had been running on emergency diesel generators since Russian shelling severed its outside connections.

Moscow has denied that the drones it is using in its attacks came from Iran, but for the first time, the Islamic Republic’s foreign minister said otherwise.

The Iranian official conceded Saturday that Iran had supplied Russia with “a limited number” of drones before the February invasion of Ukraine.

The minister claimed, however, that Iran did not know if its drones were being used in the war and professed his country’s commitment to ending the conflict.

Just last week, Iran’s Ambassador to the U.N. called the drone supply allegations “totally unfounded.”

The U.S. and Western allies on the U.N. Security Council have asked Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to investigate whether Russia has used Iranian drones to attack civilians in Ukraine.

While Russia was increasing its attacks on Kyiv and surrounding areas, Ukrainian forces were advancing in the south in an effort to take back the Russian-held city of Kherson.

The Russian military is urging residents of Kherson to evacuate as soon as possible, warning them that Ukraine’s army was planning a massive attack, Ukrainian authorities said Sunday.

The Russian-run administration in Kherson has moved tens of thousands of civilians out of the city already, claiming a Ukrainian attack was imminent.

Russia captured Kherson early in the nearly nine-month-long war and in September illegally annexed Kherson province and three others in Ukraine. Russia has since declared martial law in all four provinces.

Russia has been both “occupying and evacuating” Kherson at the same time, trying to convince Ukrainians that they are leaving when in fact they are digging in, Nataliya Humenyuk, a spokeswoman for Ukraine’s Southern Forces, told state television.

“There are defense units that have dug in there quite powerfully, a certain amount of equipment has been left, firing positions have been set up,” she said.

To the east in Donetsk province, Russian attacks almost entirely destroyed power plants that serve the city of Bakhmut and also Soledar, a nearby town, said Pavlo Kyrylenko, the region’s Ukrainian governor.

The Russian shelling killed one civilian and wounded three others, he said late Saturday on state television.

“The destruction is daily, if not hourly,” Kyrylenko said.

Like Kherson, Donetsk was illegally annexed by Russia, although Moscow-backed separatists controlled part of the province for almost eight years prior to the invasion.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has claimed protecting the separatist-controlled province was one of the justifications for the invasion.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address Saturday that “constant fighting” stretched along the war’s front line of more than 620 miles.

Between Saturday and Sunday, Russia launched nearly two dozen missile and air strikes on more than 35 villages, killing two people and wounding six others, according to the president’s office.

In Donetsk, Russian-installed authorities said an attempt was made on the life of a Moscow-appointed judge on the regional Supreme Court.

The judge was hospitalized in grave condition with gunshot wounds, they said. He had been a member of a judicial panel that sentenced two Britons and a Moroccan to death in June for fighting for Ukraine.

With News Wire Services