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Russia launched a Christmas Day attack on Ukraine's power system, leaving more than half a million people without heat, water and electricity.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the attack, the 13th large-scale attack of 2024 on the country's network, was “deliberate” and not an accident. “What could be more inhuman?” he wrote in X.
About 50 of the 70 missiles fired in the attack were intercepted, along with a “significant” portion of the more than 100 attack drones deployed, he added.
This year, Ukrainians marked Christmas Day for the second time on December 25, after switching to the western Gregorian calendar last year. The decision to stop celebrating Christmas on January 7 in accordance with the Orthodox calendar was made by Kiev to break Russian influence.
Oleh Syniehubov, the governor of Ukraine's eastern Kharkiv region, told Ukrainian national television news that the attack had left more than 500,000 people without heat, water and electricity.
Temperatures across Ukraine are around freezing.
The heating supply was also interrupted in some areas of Ukraine's Ivano-Frankivsk and Dnipropetrovsk regions, in the west and south of the country.
Ukraine's power grid operator Ukrenergo urged consumers to limit consumption by not turning on multiple appliances at the same time, adding that the system was still recovering from the previous Russian attack on December 13.
Ukraine's largest private power company, DTEK, said its power plants were damaged and one of its long-term employees was killed.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha told X that the attack reflects Russian President Vladimir Putin's response to “those who spoke of an illusory 'Christmas truce'”.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said last week that Zelenskyy had rejected his proposal for a ceasefire and prisoner exchange on the Orthodox Christmas of January 7.
Ukraine denied that such a proposal was ever on the table, asking Hungary to “refrain from manipulations” regarding the war. On Friday, Heorhii Tykhyi, spokesman for Ukraine's foreign ministry, described it as “PR, a move” by Orban.
