A barrage of deadly Russian strikes battered Ukraine's grid, worsening dire conditions for Ukrainians across the winter-worn country by knocking out water and electricity services in several regions.
The national energy provider warned Ukrainians already braving near freezing temperatures that it could take longer to restore electricity after dozens of Russian missiles targeted key infrastructure sites in the north, south and centre of the country.
"I woke up, I saw a rocket in the sky," Kyiv resident 25-year-old Lada Korovai said."I saw it and understood that I have to go to the tube."The onslaught is the latest brought by Russian forces to target what Moscow says are military-linked facilities. The air assaults follow a series of embarrassing battlefield defeats for Russia.Ukraine's second largest city Kharkiv, near the border with Russia, was left without electricity, its mayor said.
Oleksandr Starukh, head of the frontline Zaporizhzhia region, which houses Europe's largest nuclear power plant, said more than a dozen Russian missiles had targeted territory under Ukrainian control.Kyiv meanwhile"withstood one of the biggest missile attacks since the beginning of the full-scale invasion. About 40 missiles were recorded in the capital's airspace," regional authorities said in a statement.
In Ukrainian-held Bakhmut -- an eastern city at the epicentre of the war -- some residents received wood stoves distributed by volunteers, AFP journalists said. The UN humanitarian coordinator for Ukraine, Denise Brown, said a woman working as a paramedic for the Ukrainian Red Cross had been killed by Thursday's strikes on Kherson.
Moscow has said the strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure are a response to an explosion on the Kerch bridge connecting the Russian mainland to the Crimean peninsula annexed by Moscow in 2014.
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