Mass heating outages caused by Russian strikes on Kyiv are set to last into the weekend, as the capital’s mayor called on residents to temporarily leave the city with sub-zero temperatures expected to fall even lower.
A massive missile and drone attack on Kyiv killed four and ripped open apartment blocks. Moscow also fired its feared Oreshnik ballistic missile at western Ukraine, drawing condemnation from Europe.
The barrage came hours after Moscow rejected a plan by Kyiv and its Western allies to deploy peacekeeping forces to Ukraine should a ceasefire be reached.
“Moscow is trying to use cold weather as a tool of terror,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said at a meeting in Kyiv with British Defence Secretary John Healey.
He said 20 residential buildings in Kyiv had been damaged, including the Qatari embassy, in one of the largest attacks on the capital for months.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned the raid, saying attacks on civilian infrastructure are against international law and “unacceptable, unjustifiable, and must stop immediately”, according to his spokesman.
Qatar expressed “deep regret” over the embassy hit and said that none of its staff there had been harmed.
Russia denied targeting the area around the mission and claimed it was hit by a Ukrainian air defence missile.
The Russian barrage left around half of all apartment blocks in the capital, some 6000 buildings, without heating, Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko said.
Temperatures are set to fall to -15C on Saturday.
Officials said they were hopeful some heating could be restored on Friday night (local time).
“In some areas where the damage is more complex, additional time is needed,” Ukraine’s Restoration Minister Oleksiy Kuleba said.
Klitschko said the situation was “very difficult” and called on “residents of the capital who have the opportunity to temporarily leave the city for places with alternative sources of power and heat to do so”.
In his regular nightly address, Zelenskyy urged officials not to “run away from problems, but solve them, especially when there are resources for this, as in Kyiv”.
City authorities said they had set up 1200 warming centres.
In one of the centres, an AFP team saw people warming up with tea and charging devices, while parts of the city were in darkness.
Lilia came to one of the centres to warm up and do some work after spending the whole night in a bomb shelter.
The 60-year-old school musician was soon to return to her cold home, as there was still “no electricity, no heating, nothing yet has been restored”, she told AFP.
A medic who died at a building that was struck in a repeat attack was among the four killed, officials said. Another 26 were wounded.
Nina, 70, who lives in one of the buildings hit, told AFP she was angry that the world was talking about a possible deal to end the conflict at a time when Russia was launching such deadly barrages.
“Where is Europe, where is America? It doesn’t hurt them the same way,” she said.
Russia has shown no sign of slowing down its ground offensive or aerial bombardments.
Moscow’s defence ministry said it had fired the Oreshnik ballistic missile on “strategic targets” – only the second time the new weapon, which the Kremlin says is impossible to stop, is known to have been used.
Ukrainian authorities said a ballistic missile travelling “at about 13,000km/h” had struck an “infrastructure facility” near the western city of Lviv.
Residents of Rudno, on the outskirts of Lviv, told AFP they heard explosions at night and some reported gas outages.
“We experienced such fear and uncertainty. Because the temperature is 18-20 degrees below zero, and there is no gas here. And people have small children, families ... How can they live without heating?” said Slava, a 70-year-old woman.
The Oreshnik is an intermediate-range ballistic missile that can be equipped with both nuclear and conventional warheads.
France, Germany and Britain condemned Moscow’s “escalatory and unacceptable” use of Oreshnik, a UK Government spokeswoman said after a call between leaders of the three countries.
Across the border in Russia’s Belgorod, the governor said more than half a million people were without power or heating after a Ukrainian attack targeted the region’s utilities.
Despite intense diplomatic efforts led by US President Donald Trump, a deal to end the fighting remains elusive.
Moscow baulked this week after European leaders and US envoys announced post-war guarantees for Ukraine would include a US-led monitoring mechanism and a multinational force.
Key territorial issues are also unresolved as Russia insists on getting full control of Ukraine’s Donbas region, part of which is still controlled by Kyiv.
Tens of thousands have been killed since it invaded in February 2022, millions have been forced to flee their homes and there has been widespread destruction across much of eastern and southern Ukraine.
– Agence France-Presse