Several regions of Ukraine reported power and water outages amid freezing temperatures after about 70 Russian missiles were fired at targets across the country. The Ukrainian Air Force said the vast majority of missiles were intercepted, but some appeared to have reached their targets. Prime Minister Denis Schmihal said Russia “tried to implement its criminal plan — to plunge Ukraine into darkness and cold. The enemy has once again failed in its plan.” “The country’s energy system is working and remains intact,” Shmyhal added. However, he said there were “hits to power facilities in the Kyiv region, Vinnytsia region and Odesa region. In some areas, emergency shutdowns were forced to balance the system and avoid accidents. Rescuers are already working to elimination of the consequences of the attack”. Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba tweeted that the missile attacks showed Ukraine still needed more air defense. “Russia has launched another barrage of missiles against our critical political infrastructure in an attempt to deprive people of electricity, water and heating in the midst of glaciers. The more war crimes Russia commits, the more weapons should be provided to Ukraine to end the Russian terrorism earlier.” Kuleba wrote on Twitter. Affected areas: Odessa appears to have been among the hardest hit areas. Maxim Marchenko, head of the Odesa regional state administration, said energy infrastructure was damaged and there were also strikes on civilian buildings, injuring two people. “Currently, there is no power supply in the city of Odessa and most of the communities in the Odessa district. All services are on the ground and have already started to restore the power supply,” the official said. One of Ukraine’s largest electricity providers, DTEK, said there were “emergency power outages” in the Kyiv and Dnipropetrovsk regions. These are in addition to the planned power outages already in place. “We will resume stabilization schedules once the situation in the power system stabilizes,” DTEK said. Oleksiy Kuleba, head of the Kiev region military command, told Ukrainian television that “an energy infrastructure facility was hit in the Kiev region. The attack was extremely dynamic, there were many targets. We will be able to give a clearer analysis of what it happened within the next two hours. I can say that we do not see critical consequences.” Kuleba added: “Emergency outages are now continuing in the Kyiv region. Currently, approximately 40% of subscribers are without power. This is an emergency outage. We are currently consulting on when we will be able to provide power to everyone consumers.” The Ivano-Frankivsk region also reported power outages as a result of Russian missile strikes on Monday, with the head of the region’s state administration, Svitlana Onyshchuk, saying the regional electricity distribution company had reported “due to massive shelling of energy infrastructure facilities , “NPC Ukrenergo had reduced electric power in the Prykarpattia region by a third. Prykarpattia is located near the Carpathian Mountains in western Ukraine.
