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Russian-Ukraine WarUkraine Scrambles to Restore Services After Disruptive Russian Strikes

Millions remain without power in Ukraine even as some services are restored.

KYIV, Ukraine — Utility crews worked through the dark night in snow and freezing rain to stabilize Ukraine’s battered energy grid on Thursday after another destructive wave of Russian missile strikes, restoring essential services like running water and heat in many parts of the country even as millions remained without power.

Ukrainians have expressed defiance in the face of Moscow’s unrelenting campaign to weaponize winter in an attempt to weaken their resolve and force Kyiv to capitulate even as Russia heaped new suffering on a war-weary nation.

Surgeons were forced to work by flashlight, thousands of miners had to be pulled from deep underground by manual winches and people across the country lugged buckets and bottles of water up flights of stairs in high-rise apartment buildings where the elevators stopped running.

The State Border Service of Ukraine suspended operations at checkpoints on the borders with Hungary and Romania on Thursday because of power outages and Ukraine’s national rail operator reported delays and disruptions across a network that has served as a resilient lifeline for the nation over nine months of war.

Families charged their phones, warmed up and gathered information at centers set up in towns and cities during extended power outages. The police in the capital, Kyiv, and in other cities stepped up patrols as the owners of shops and restaurants flipped on generators, or lit candles, and kept working.

“The situation is difficult throughout the country,” said Herman Galushchenko, Ukraine’s energy minister. But by 4 a.m., he said, engineers had managed to “unify the energy system,” allowing power to be directed to critical infrastructure facilities.

In Moldova, Ukraine’s western neighbor, whose Soviet-era electricity systems remain interconnected with Ukraine’s, the grid was largely back online after the country experienced “massive power outages,” the infrastructure minister said on Twitter. “We move on, stronger and victorious,” the minister, Andrei Spinu, wrote.

The barrage of Russian missiles on Wednesday killed at least 10 people and injured dozens, Ukrainian officials said, in what appeared to be one of the most disruptive attacks in weeks. Since Oct. 10, Russia has fired around 600 missiles at power plants, hydroelectric facilities, water pumping stations and treatment facilities, high-voltage cables around nuclear power stations and critical substations that bring power to tens of millions of homes and businesses, according to Ukrainian officials.

The campaign is taking a mounting toll. The strikes on Wednesday put all of Ukraine’s nuclear power plants offline for the first time, depriving the country of one of its most vital sources of energy.

“We expect that nuclear plants will start working by the evening, so the deficit will decrease,” Mr. Galushchenko said.

Gen. Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, the top commander of Ukraine’s Armed Forces, said Ukrainian air defenses shot down 51 of the 67 Russian cruise missiles fired on Wednesday and five of 10 drones.

President Volodymyr Zelensky, speaking Wednesday night at an emergency session of the United Nations Security Council, decried what he called a Russian campaign of terror.

“When the temperature outside drops below zero and tens of millions of people are left without electricity, heat and water as a result of Russian missiles hitting energy facilities,” he said, “that is an obvious crime against humanity.”

In Kyiv, around one in four homes still had no electricity on Thursday afternoon, and more than half of the city’s residents had no running water, according to city officials. Service was gradually being restored, city officials said, and they said they were confident that the pumps that provide water to some three million residents would be restored by the end of the day.

Transit was suspended in the southern port city of Odesa on the Black Sea so that the limited energy supply could be directed to getting water running again. In the Lviv region in Ukraine’s west, where millions displaced from their homes by fighting, power and water have fled, services were largely restored.

The national energy utility, Ukrenergo, said that given the “significant amount of damage” and difficult working conditions, repairs in some regions may take longer than others.

“There is no reason to panic,” the utility said in a statement. Critical infrastructure would all be reconnected, it said.

— Marc Santora

‘Every hour is getting harder’: Surgeons struggle to operate when the power goes out.

KYIV, Ukraine — The surgeons had made the long incision down the middle of the child’s chest, cut the breastbone to spread the rib cage and reach the heart when the lights went out at the Heart Institute in Kyiv.

Generators kicked on to keep life-support equipment running on Wednesday night as nurses and surgical assistants held flashlights over the operating table, guiding the surgeons as they snipped and cut, working to save a life under the most trying of conditions.

“The electricity went out completely in the operating room,” said Borys Todurov, the institute’s director, who posted a video of the procedure online to illustrate the difficulties doctors are facing.

“So far we are coping on our own,” he said. “But every hour is getting harder. There has been no water for several hours now. We continue to do only emergency operations.”

Russia’s attacks on Ukraine’s energy grid are taking a growing toll on the nation as the damage adds up. After each strike, repairs become more challenging, blackouts can last longer and the danger for the public increases.

The scene in the Kyiv hospital echoes those in medical facilities around the country, a vivid illustration of the cascading toll Russia’s attacks are having on civilians far from the front lines.

Two kidney transplant operations were being performed at the Cherkasy Regional Cancer Center in central Ukraine when the lights went out, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, the deputy head of the Ukrainian president’s office, said on the Telegram messaging app. The generators were switched on, and the transplants were successful, he said.

“Ukrainian doctors are invincible!” he said.

In the central city of Dnipro, an aeronautics and industrial hub with a population of around one million people, the strikes caused Mechnikov Hospital to lose power, a first since the war began, doctors said.

“We’ve been preparing for this moment for two years,” said one doctor, who requested anonymity because the doctor was not authorized to talk to the news media.

The hospital’s I.C.U. and operating rooms are working on generators, the doctor added, but the living quarters are without power.

Christopher Stokes, the head of Doctors Without Borders in Ukraine, said that the strikes on infrastructure were putting “millions of civilians in danger.” They can feed a vicious loop, in which people living without heat and clean water are more likely to need medical care but that care itself is harder to deliver.

“Energy cuts and water disruptions also will affect people’s access to health care as hospitals and health centers struggle to operate,” he said.

At the Kyiv hospital, surgeons donned headlamps and continued to work in the dark. The operation was a success, Mr. Todurov said.

“Thanks to all the staff for their well-coordinated and selfless work,” he said. “In this unusual situation, we did not lose a single patient.”

Russian missiles target Ukraine civilians and infrastructure

By Emmanuel Grynszpan Published on November 24, 2022 at 12h36, updated at 14h37 on November 24, 2022

FeatureA new wave of Russian missiles hit Ukrainian civilian infrastructure on Wednesday, plunging parts of the country, including Kyiv, into darkness and killing at least 10.

"What's the point of you observing the damage? The whole world already knows what's going on here, it doesn't change anything. People only understand when missiles fall on their heads."

Behind police tape, a volunteer was blocking the path to houses damaged by the explosion, an hour earlier, of a Russian missile, on Wednesday, November 23, in Vychhorod, a suburb north of Kyiv. This well-mannered and elegantly dressed 40-year-old said he was carrying out police instructions not to let anyone through. The entire neighborhood was cordoned off "until the rescue operations are completed".

As night fell, a crowd of local residents moved in small, cautious steps around the area, slipping on the ice and packed snow. Some were trying to see the damage, others hurrying to get home before dark.

"The entire city lost power immediately after the explosion," said the volunteer, in the same calm tone. Without the slightest hint of annoyance or fatalism, he continued: "Our [Russian] neighbors will not stop. To survive, we must defeat them and we must go all the way. When we defeated Hitler, we did not stop at the German border. We had to go all the way to Berlin and finish off the monster."

The district of Vychhorod, in the suburbs of Kyiv, was bombed on the afternoon of November 23 CHLOE SHARROCK / AGENCE MYOP FOR LE MONDE Residents wait behind a security cordon following a Russian bombardment of the Vychhorod district CHLOE SHARROCK / AGENCE FOR LE MONDE

A few minutes later, on the other side of the block, a lenient policeman allowed us to enter the scene. Two five-storey brick buildings on two sides of a children's playground were badly damaged, partially burned. The missile seemed to have pierced the roof of one. All the windows in the vicinity were blown out, including those of Vychhorod school, 50 metres away.

Russian saturation tactics

"It's a good thing there were no kids there when it happened," muttered a man in fatigues assisting the rescuers. "Six bodies have been pulled out of the rubble," he said. "One of them is still lying here," he added, gesturing to the entrance of a building. Firefighters continued to walk over the rubble with their hoses, skirting around the charred carcasses of vehicles, twisted metal sheets and other debris littering the ground.

The beams of their torches searched the darkness in the apartments of a nine-storey building, located perpendicular to the two most affected buildings. Its inhabitants were prioritizing their most urgent needs. The better equipped ones were attaching plastic film to the windows to insulate their homes from the bitter cold.

"I have no heat, no electricity, no water," Serhi Vartchouk said from his first-floor balcony. "Who is going to help us? No one will help us. Neither the government nor the rich people who have gone abroad to wait for this to pass. I don't believe in anything anymore, not even in [Volodymyr] Zelensky, who promised us peace," he shouted in frustration, before disappearing into the darkness.

A dozen Ukrainian cities and entire regions are in the same boat as Vychhorod. As of Wednesday evening, water and electricity were off in 80% of the capital's homes, according to Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko, who was unable to give a date for when utilities would be restored. The November 23 attack left 10 people dead across Ukraine, according to a provisional death toll from the interior minister. Kyiv Region Governor Oleksiy Kouleba gave a figure of five killed and 31 injured in the city of Vychhorod.

Soldiers walk through the rubble after a Russian bombing in the Vychhorod district of Kyiv on November 23 CHLOE SHARROCK / AGENCE MYOP FOR LE MONDE The district of Vychhorod in the suburbs of Kyiv on November 23 CHLOE SHARROCK / AGENCE FOR LE MONDE

The Russian army launched several dozen missiles at the same time, in the mid-afternoon, repeating for the fifth time since the invasion a tactic of saturating Ukrainian anti-aircraft defenses. "The Russian terrorist state fired missiles en masse at Ukraine's critical infrastructure. Unable to defeat the Ukrainian armed forces, the enemy is waging a war against peaceful citizens, power plants, hospitals and even babies," tweeted General Valeri Zaluzhny, commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian armed forces.

'Crime against humanity'

He was referring to a strike the day before on a hospital in the Zaporizhzhia region, in which a newborn baby was killed. According to him, Russia fired 67 X-101 and X-555 caliber cruise missiles, as well as five kamikaze drones. Some 51 missiles were reportedly shot down by Ukrainian anti-aircraft defenses. This new deadly wave has, once again, contradicted the claims by Ukrainian and western military experts that Russia has emptied its arsenal of cruise missiles.

It also came as the European Parliament voted in favor of a declaration that "Russia is a state sponsor of terrorism," with 494 votes for, 58 against and 44 abstentions. On November 23, the Russian missiles (at least those that were not intercepted) were all aimed at civilian targets located behind the front line. This is a "crime against humanity," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Wednesday, before the United Nations Security Council.

Deployed on the ground and powered by its own mobile infrastructure, the Ukrainian army was not affected by these strikes. The country's electrical infrastructure, identified by the Kremlin as UKraine's Achilles heel, is clearly being targeted. Its complete collapse at the beginning of winter should, according to Russian plans, create a massive wave of emigration to Europe, break the morale of the Ukrainian people and break the sacred union, in place for the last nine months, between the political leadership, the army and public opinion. However, there is no historical precedent for the effectiveness of such a tactic.