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GuerreRussia strikes again, Ukraine struggles to restore power and water
New bursts of Russian missiles on Ukraine killed five people on Saturday. Meanwhile, Ukrainian services are turning the heating back on, and the kyiv metro is running again.
In Kramatorsk, “the supply of water and heating has stopped,” lamented the mayor of this city in eastern Ukraine. Residents need to be patient.
REUTERS
New Russian strikes killed five people on Saturday in Ukraine, where the authorities were trying to restore electricity as quickly as possible after the massive missile strikes the day before, which caused power cuts. The heaviest human toll of these new attacks was recorded in the central region of Dnipropetrovsk: four people were killed there and fifteen others injured, said the deputy chief of the cabinet of the Ukrainian presidency, Kyrylo Tymoshenko.
He added that Saturday’s shelling had also left one dead and three injured in the southern region of Kherson, whose eponymous town was taken over more than a month ago by the Ukrainian army. Its governor, Yaroslav Yanushevich, for his part stressed that a geriatric center had been hit in the village of Stepanivka, but without causing any casualties.
In kyiv, metro traffic, interrupted on Friday so that the population could take refuge there, resumed early in the morning and the water supply returned, said its mayor Vitali Klitschko. “Three quarters of the inhabitants of the capital already have heating” and work continues to “stabilize the situation” in this area, he further assured.
The energy deficit remains “significant”
Electricity has also been restored in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, according to regional governor Oleg Sinegoubov. In Kramatorsk, on the other hand, “the supply of water and heating has stopped”, lamented in the afternoon the mayor of this eastern city. The national company Ukrenergo, which had imposed emergency cuts following the attacks, for its part noted that, despite improvements, the energy deficit remained “significant”.
About 70 missiles – mainly cruise – were fired by Russia on Friday, 60 of which were shot down by anti-aircraft defense, according to the Ukrainian army. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that kyiv and fourteen regions in total were affected by power or water cuts following the bombardments. “All their targets today are civilians. The Russian strikes mainly affect energy and heating supply installations, ”said the Ukrainian president.
Moscow says it is targeting only “military, industrial and energy targets”
The Russian army, for its part, claimed on Saturday that it had also targeted important targets for the Ukrainian defense the day before. “A massive strike with high-precision weapons was carried out on Friday, December 16 against military command systems, the military-industrial complex and energy sites of Ukraine,” the Russian Defense Ministry said.
“As a result of the strike, a delivery of foreign-made weapons and ammunition was prevented, an advance of manpower reserves of the Ukrainian forces to the combat zones was blocked, the operation of manufacturing and weapons repair has been suspended.”
For its part, the European Union has approved new sanctions against Russia, in particular the ban on exporting drone engines there. These “illegitimate unilateral restrictive measures” will not achieve their objective, reacted on Saturday, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
(AFP)